From Sin to Redemption: -Levi Miller

Guide me, O the great Jehovah, pilgrim through this barren. All right, it's good to have everybody on here this morning. And welcome to each and everyone that's listening this morning. And as this talk goes out later on, welcome.

This morning, we're pleased to have Brother Levi Miller on from Coshocton, Ohio. He's our most recent admin team member. There's four of us: myself, Brother Elam Peachy, and Atlee Miller, and Levi Miller. Atlee and Levi are brothers, and we're pleased to have both of them on here.

If you have any questions about Hope for Wandering Amish, just jump on hopeforwanderingamish.com, and there's information on there. You can join our email group. We welcome your participation. So this morning, we have, like I said, Brother Levi Miller from Coshocton, Ohio.

He lives there with his wife, Anna, and seven children. He enjoys working on their hobby farm, growing his own fruits and vegetables. Levi's a people person. In fact, he says, "Strangers are friends. You just haven't met yet." Levi works for Christian Aid Ministries and really enjoys that. His first interest and desire is to promote the kingdom of God and influencing others to do the same. So may that be what this is about this morning: to influence each other or encourage one another, all of us, to love the Lord Jesus and build His kingdom, be faithful to Him. Levi's going to share his life story to some extent. I don't know what all he'll be sharing, but that's always interesting and encouraging and edifying to just hear people's stories of how they came to the Lord and what the Lord did in their lives.

And so, yeah, this morning, I'm excited to hear another new story. New to me, at least. Haven't heard it before. So, Brother Levi, let's have a prayer first, and then the time will be yours. Lord God, our gracious Father, thank You for this opportunity to hear another testimony this morning, another story of how You've worked in a brother's life. I pray for Levi that You would give him the words to say. May he not forget things that should be said, and may he not take the time to say things that You wouldn't have him to. Just bless him. Bless the talk. Bless all those that are on here this morning and encourage our hearts to love You more.

In Jesus' name, amen. I want to say yet that at the end, we'll have an open time where we welcome your questions, feedback, have something ready. We enjoy hearing from our audience. Brother Levi, time is yours.

Okay. Hello, everyone. It's really good to be here, and I'm excited to be sharing kind of my story, but it won't be my full story, my full testimony. I'm going to focus on sin in my life and then how I was redeemed through the blood of Christ. And then at the end, I would like to speak a little bit on actual practical application.

I've noticed that people are struggling in sin, and that most of us, we just want to know how to get released. And I would like to share some of those thoughts and inspirations and maybe some of my actual experience from that.

So this is a story of pain and a story of sin and then the redemption of Christ. Just going to jump right in there. I grew up in a traditional old-order Amish setting.

I wouldn't say it would have been one of the more dark settings. We had some light, but still, I was not in it. I was exposed to sexual sin somewhere around the age of 10. I'm not quite sure on the exact age, but somewhere in that time frame.

And as those things usually go, it progressed. It became worse. And then at the age of 17, I was exposed to pornography for the first time.

I'm not going to be speaking on that specific subject, but that definitely is

definitely something ourselves struggle with. Spring that I had an accident, I broke my back, and I went through some very, very difficult times. I was living in fists. I had a lot of spiritual pain as well.

And during that time, I came to hate my dad. We did not have a very good relationship. I became very bitter, and sin was becoming a monster in my life. Sin escaped from my physical situation. I couldn't face life, and sin was my escape.

I would lay awake at night, sometimes way into the night, and sometimes I would wake up during the night and just grapple with this whole monster that was just overwhelming me. I didn't know that I was going to hell.

By that time, I was a member in the church. Obviously, I thought that is what it took to be saved and to be able to make it into heaven. But at the same time, I knew that I had sin in my life, and it was bad, and I was scared because I wasn't sure of what was happening. And I was, yeah, I was very, very fearful. I was afraid to die.

And I would go to church and make confessions, which I thought that that would always, well, that would give me strength, but it never did. As I said, I was a member of the church, but I was not converted.

Nothing changed. I was just a total sinner at that point. And it seems like most everything I did was just everything I did was wrong. I started dating, trying to find fulfillment in life. And then at the age of almost 21, we got married, and I was still living in sin and was discouraged by the sin that was in my life.

The relationship between me and my dad had improved by that time, and it did continue to improve, but I was still living in sin. I was assuming that once we got married, everything would be okay. Everything would become better.

I was trying to control my sin, and I was trying to accomplish everything through my own strength.

As you can imagine, after getting married and still not redeemed, things only got worse. We had marriage problems probably within a year, and they started progressing and becoming worse and worse. And I'm not sure exactly when in that time frame, but eventually, I began contemplating whether it really was that wrong to leave my wife.

We weren't fighting like in abusive open fighting, but we just did not understand each other. We were not able to communicate, and there was just this coldness. We just drifted apart. We couldn't understand. We couldn't function. And also during that time, the church we were attending started having major conflict.

And the bad part of the conflict was not that there was a conflict in church, but that both of our parents were on opposite sides of that conflict. And they put a large amount of pressure upon us to join their side because both of them saw that the other side was completely wrong, and they were all headed to hell, and we had to be on their side, or we would also be caught up right in it, and we'd be the same destination.

And it was a very difficult time for both of us. We were faced with having to make a decision, and the easy route would have been for me would have been to join my parents and my wife to join her parents.

But I think that was the very beginning of us coming back together. We started talking about these things, and I looked at the whole situation and I said, "Well, they're both wrong. They're both fighting. They're both hurting each other. They're not being redemptive." So I couldn't take a side.

And we eventually told both of our parents that we were not taking a side. We were just going to—we were just going to stay neutral, which was also a very difficult position because we're basically the only people that did that in that church, and we basically lost all our friends. I'm not sure if we actually did lose our friends, but it really felt that way because nobody trusted us after that because they didn't know where we stood.

So after a while, most of the one side did move away. We were heartbroken. Some of our very close friends moved away, and that was kind of a closed chapter. We felt very alone. We were still struggling with our marriage, and I was still in bondage to sin.

Several years later, it reawakened, I would say. Not everybody had moved away. Both of my parents were still living there. They were very against each other, and the whole strife recreated itself.

And I was so discouraged. I was like, "Is this all that life is about?" There was just always fighting in the church. I was always struggling with sin. We were still struggling in our marriage. It wasn't quite as bad as it had been, but it definitely wasn't good.

And then the sin problem would just rear its head again, and I was just frustrated. And I would get to the point where I would be like, "I got to get my life together. This can't continue this way." And I would try so hard. I would do everything that's in my power, and for a time, I would usually be victorious, but then down the drain, I would go again.

So because of the strife, at some point in time there, I started looking at the whole situation, and I said, "You know what? I think it's the elders in the church are the problem." Obviously, I still didn't think I was the problem, but I decided it was the church leaders.

They were not feeding the flock, and that's why I couldn't overcome my own problems. I would try on my sins. Sometimes when I committed sin, I would justify it with, "Well, the bishop, he is just as bad as me and probably even worse because he is destroying the flock, and he's not nurturing the flock." So yeah, I was justifying my own carnal nature by their lives. But through that, because I started focusing upon them, I was trying to figure out, "Well, what are they doing wrong, and what should they be doing differently?" And I started reading scripture to try to find how a church should be functioning.

Obviously, that was not a very good reason to be reading the Bible, but it was at least a starting point. I was also a very avid reader. I just read a lot of books, but then I began reading Anabaptist history, and I also began reading the early church fathers.

And the more I read, the more hungry I became. I couldn't get enough. I would just read and read sometimes way into the night, and slowly, some things started coming together. Obviously, there were many answers on how a church should function that I found. And I did start speaking out against some of those wrongs that were happening in the church, but I really shouldn't have been doing that because obviously, I was still a sinner just like everyone else.

I started becoming convicted.

These books and scripture were convicting my heart. I began sharing the gospel with others, and I was able to get a fairly good grasp of what faith looks like and what it means and what it is, what it looks like in our lives.

And I thought, "Well, I just need to accomplish that. I need to get my life together and follow that, and then everything is good." And I started speaking to other people. I thought everybody else would like to know what I had to tell them. I thought that this was very exciting. So obviously, everyone should be interested in this good news that I had discovered, but I fairly quickly found out that that was not the case.

I was in trouble very quickly. In the beginning, it wasn't really on the surface. It was behind the scenes. Eventually, I was actually disciplined multiple times for generally not for what I was really doing wrong, but I would find some very small detail that they would discipline me about.

And I was angry at the church. I thought they were just being mean to me. They didn't love me.

And then in 2016, that summer and fall, obviously, the presidential election between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton was looming. And you may think that this is not relevant to the subject of sin. It was. I became very rubbed out in relation.

We lived in a cold, and the economy, at least that's what everybody said, the economy depended on a Republican in office because the Democratic Party was always trying to shut down the coal mines. And that specific election was even more—it had to be the right person because the green energy thing was coming out, the clean energy and everything. And so that was the election that we had to win. And I was very, very fearful because it seemed like there was a very good chance that we wouldn't win, and yeah, probably the economy would collapse in our area. And so I followed that election very closely. I didn't actually vote, but I knew everything that was happening.

I was almost daily—not probably not daily, but I was keeping up with everything as it went along through my friends that were planning to vote.

And the reason I say that this has something to do with the sin, I was actually not as trapped in sin anymore. And it could have been because I was trying to get my life together because of everything that I was learning.

But at the same time, it was like I was focused upon something else. The conflict still was between the two kingdoms, and it became very real in my life because I realized I couldn't be loyal to the kingdom of God and to the kingdom of the world. And that was where the conflict was. That's where the battle was. It was between those two, and it was very real to me in that election.

The morning after the election, I had a guy doing some excavating work at my place, and he showed up very early, and he got out of his truck. And the very first thing he said is he said, "We won." And I remember very distinctly the relief that just flooded me.

It's going to be good or continue to go to the—but that left a dramatic impact on my life. Sometime during that time, I read a book, The Kingdom That Turned the World Upside Down by David Brousseau.

And I finally understood the two kingdoms. I understood what the kingdom of the world is and what the kingdom of God is. And that was a major turning point. That would have been in November when the election was over. I'm not exactly sure when I read that book, but sometime during that winter of 2016 and then 2017, early spring, I came to the breaking point. I had grappled with this for years. I think it was probably close to three years that I had started since I had started on my journey of searching and seeking.

And I got to the breaking point, and kind of what happened was the first thing happened. I sat down with my wife one evening, and suddenly, I just started pouring out. I started confessing my sins and also releasing all of those painful happenings that I had experienced earlier in my life and still a lot of anger and bitterness that had happened.

And I should clarify during all of that, and I still do, I was still struggling with my health because the accident I had and then how everything transpired, it affected my health. I've always had severe back problems because of my accident. And so we faced a lot of challenges in that area. So some of that, I was still grappling with that, still blaming other people for what had happened, and I was not releasing them.

So it was a journey of releasing other people and then confessing my sins. It took many nights. It didn't all happen just back to back. I would say that it probably happened over a several months' time that I was confessing my sins and just releasing all of that pain.

Obviously, my wife didn't even realize what had happened in my life. She didn't know what was going on inside, and she was shocked many times by the things I was saying. She didn't know that I was involved in a lot of different things that I let out. And during that time, I would have been converted.

Obviously, I didn't know that that's what that was. I had read the account in John 3 of Jesus telling Nicodemus that you have to be born again. It was something I had heard in church, but it didn't mean anything to me. I didn't know what it meant.

But I didn't know what happened. I didn't know that we had to be converted, but there was a dramatic change. I suddenly had control, or I shouldn't say I had control, but I was able to overcome sin. Our family life changed dramatically.

Our relationship and the marriage changed dramatically. Everything started becoming better after that. It was a very strong shift. And it felt to me that the election was directly tied in with that. That was kind of the last great battle that I fought.

And it's not a very good allegory, but it's almost like we could compare it to the Union Army and the Confederates. Let's say I was fighting on the Confederate side, and I transferred my allegiance to the Union Army halfway through the war. I mean, I was loyal to something else, and then I transferred my allegiance over to a different kingdom.

And up to that point, the church had a reason to be disciplined in me because I was a very angry and outspoken and divisive person. I was telling everyone else what the church was doing wrong, but I wasn't taking care of my own sin.

But something changed. I'm not sure that anything changed in the church or from their perspective because I don't know what their perspective was, but my perspective changed. Before that, I felt like they were just being mean, and I became angry, but now it changed. I actually was joyful in receiving maybe persecution. I'm not sure if that's the right word, but it felt like persecution, and I was joyful in that.

And that actually made my wife angry. She could not understand how I was okay with being persecuted, and she was angry at the church. She was angry at me. But she did like that my life had changed and that everything was becoming better. But she would used to say, "You can live it, but please keep it to yourself." Because I was still speaking. At that point, also something that changed. Instead of tearing down the church, I started witnessing to people and telling them about the kingdom of God.

And just to clarify, my wife was converted a few years later. And I remember we were in church afterwards. After that, I'm not sure exactly how long after, but we were in church, and the preacher was talking about turning the other cheek and explaining that in detail. And she suddenly turned to me and she said, "So that is how you felt back there in that church?"

And I said, "Yes. Do you understand it now?" And she was like, "Yes, I do." So that was a very good feeling to know that we were actually understanding the exact same things. It seems like if we are still in our carnal nature, we cannot understand the kingdom of God. It is foolishness to us.

So after a time, that was in 2016, 2017, that winter, I was converted. I think after I was converted, up to that point, the church had viewed me as a troublemaker. But after that point, I became dangerous to them.

They were actually scared of me because obviously my evangelizing, if you will, had changed to something different, and they didn't know what it was. And the pressure became pretty severe.

That's why I asked to—and there was a deadline of spring of 2020. And obviously, I don't think any—I don't think the church knew that others—probably most people didn't even know what was going on behind the scenes. We were asked to leave, and we left.

And they did not excommunicate. And that was the stipulation. If you are gone by then, we're not going to excommunicate you, but you got to leave. They wanted us gone. And we left.

So when we left, up to that point, we had a battle. We were trying to stand for truth to the best of our knowledge or ability. After that, we left, and it felt like the battle was over. We were in a church that was—we had a lot of dialogue about spiritual things, and I thought that was really good. But the battle ended, and we were very busy in the time of moving. And through that time, I kind of lost my zeal. I was too busy to read a lot.

And since started creeping back into my life. Nothing major, just these small—maybe some anger, maybe some critical spirit. And slowly, that started undermining me. I became lukewarm. I wasn't really excited about the Lord anymore.

In Revelation 3, Jesus said to the church of the Laodiceans, "I know your works, that you are neither cold nor hot. I could wish you were cold or hot. So then, because you are lukewarm and neither cold nor hot, I will spew you out of my mouth." So I think that's where I was at at that point in time. I was lukewarm.

I was just not really excited about the things of God. And this slowly undermined my strength and desire to serve the Lord, and I just became one of those benchwarmers.

Thankfully, the Lord didn't leave me like I was. I slipped and fell, and I broke my back again. And I didn't even know I had broken my back. I hurt my back a little bit, but it wasn't very significant. I thought, "Well, it wasn't a big deal." I kept going. And several months later, I finally went to the chiropractor and told him, "Something is going on. I think we should do an X-ray." And he took an X-ray, and he told me I broke my back. And we realized that something was wrong. I was starting to not feel very good, and we realized something is wrong.

So we started doing testing, and there was a long—I think there was probably a four-month period that we were trying to figure out what was wrong. And we eventually came to figure out what it was. I had a disease that was destroying my spine, and my bone was so weak, and that was why I broke my back, just slipping on the grass. And it didn't even hardly hurt.

That woke me up in a very dramatic way. I realized where I was. I realized that I was not in control of my life the way I thought I was, and I turned back to God.

And just to give us a little bit better understanding of what sin does in our life, I would like to share an illustration from—it's kind of a unique way of illustrating sin, but I'm going to use paint as an illustration.

Isaiah 1:18 says, "Don't your socks but they shall be as white as snow. Though they are red like crimson, they shall be as wool." So for this illustration, I would like to imagine everyone out there listening to this that you are unsaved and that you are a bucket of paint. I know that's clueless, but you're a bucket of paint without a lid. You're not full. And because we just established that sin is the color is red, it's crimson, it's red paint. And what we need to do is try to remove that red pigment from the paint because we want white paint. And we have several options.

We could dilute paint with white paint and try to get the color to be white. But I've actually experienced mixing paint and putting in pigments. And something I discovered, if you make something too dark, you can start adding a lot of white paint, and you can't remove the pigment that way. It will still have a tint.

The other option is, and I think this is what a lot of people do in modern American society, and that is you could paint down the red paint, put down a coat, and then cover it with white. And it looks really good. You can't even tell that it isn't completely white or that it has a red base coat underneath.

When we were doing furniture back in—that would be the early 2000s—we still had something around. I don't think it's done very much today. We would take and paint one color, and we would put another coat over the top that was a different color. And then we would sand down the corners, and we called it distressing it.

Basically, it was supposed to look like it had been worn for a while. It was an old piece of furniture, and the worn down to a second coat. And that's what happens when people take and try to cover their sin problem with a nice white coat.

Eventually, that white coat starts wearing off, and then they're having a lot of distress. The only true way of alleviating this sin problem is the supernatural cleansing power of Jesus Christ. His blood can cleanse us, and when He does it, we don't know how—we don't understand how it works, but it will cleanse us completely.

And then in my life, to go back to that time of lukewarmness and sin creeping back into my life, this we could compare to a tiny drop of pigment falling back into our paint.

That's something else I learned. If you put a tiny drop of pigment into white paint and stir it up, you can't see it. It just disappears. But it's still in there. So that's generally what happens with our lives. These small sins start creeping back in, and we don't really realize it because you can't really see it. Nothing changes, but they do compound, and eventually, your paint is not white anymore. It actually might be a slight tint of pink, but it's so gradual, you don't really notice it.

1 John 2 says, "My little children, these things write I unto you that ye sin not. And if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. And He is the propitiation for our sins and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world." So we see that we have an advocate.

If we sin, we still have a way of being redeemed from that, and that is through repentance.

We need to repent from the small sins and always come back to have that cleansing.

We could also, besides that, we need to keep our cover and all can get back in. James 4:17 says, "Therefore to him that knoweth to do good and doeth it not, to him it is sin." So if we just sit on our bucket and do nothing and try to keep it covered, that's—I'm not sure how it works, but that in and of itself is basically sin, is what he's saying.

So I look over modern American church, and it's a discouraging picture. So I'd like to just give us a small outline of a problem that I see and then also bring us a solution because I think that many people out there that are struggling with sin, as I was, we want something to grab a hold of. We want to know what we can do.

So I would like to try making an attempt at giving you a handle of how to start and begin turning your life around.

I see too many today, many Christians who have been saved, slowly falling back into sin and then accepting it. And then the next step in that slide is to justify sin and claim grace to redeem them, even though they haven't repented and turned from their sins or from their new sins.

Galatians 5 says, "Now the works of the flesh are evident, which are adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lewdness, idolatry, sorcery, hatred, contentions, jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions, dissensions, heresies, envy, murders, drunkenness, revelries, and the like, of which I tell you beforehand, just as I also told you in time past, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God."

And I believe that Peter or Paul was writing to already converted Christians, so he's talking about after being saved. We cannot continue in that what we used to be doing.

In John 8, Jesus told the Jews, verse 34, "Most assuredly, I say to you, whoever commits sin is a slave of sin." And also he gives us hope, verse 36, "Therefore, if the Son makes you free, you shall be free indeed."

Recently, I was in Columbus handing out tracks and witnessing at the Super Bowl. I think they estimated possibly about 100,000 people came to watch that game. It's the greatest crowd I had ever seen. And it was a good experience for me. There was a lot of open hatred. There was mockery, jeering. And then there was also—obviously, there were people that were open to the message, and they would actually speak with you, and you could hand them a tract, and they were interested.

But there was one person that stood out to me. I said something to her about Jesus, and she made the statement that I am gay. And I was just like, "Well, you still need to receive Jesus. You need to get to know Jesus." And she said, "I don't remember specific words, but something along the line of, 'I can't have Jesus because I am gay.'" And I was shocked because I recognized that she was making a choice between Jesus and sin. She realized that she couldn't have both.

And I thought about that, and I wondered, is she being more honest than we Christians sometimes are? Are those of us who are professing Christ? Do we convince ourselves that we can continue in sin, and He will accept us?

And are we like the many people that I met that day who told me that I was doing a good work, but that they were already saved? And you could see by what they were pursuing that their allegiance was to a different kingdom than the kingdom of God.

So in the church today, there are many people living in sin, and the churches seem to be fighting each other. People are struggling and discouraged, and many are leaving the truth.

But I would like to tell all of you listening, if you are struggling in that way, if you're struggling with the condition of the churches, if you're struggling with sin, we have a purpose. Jesus is alive, and He wants you to be alive too.

Men, you are warriors, and God's purpose for you is to take up your sword and fight. And it is not to proclaim the fault of the church down the road that does things differently than you do or in your own church. Let's stop fighting each other. Let's focus upon the true enemy.

A house divided cannot stand. And also, we can't accomplish this with sin in our lives. So obviously, we have established that sin needs to be eradicated.

And we need older men that show the youth how to fight against sin and the world. We need to give our young people a purpose other than just entering church and enjoying a life of carnality and pleasure and still being considered okay.

I would like to leave you with a thought here in closing and maybe give you a small grasp of where to begin. Obviously, every journey is different, so I can't tell you what you need to do. And then this, if you do this, and then you will be able to eradicate sin from your life.

But I think looking back at my life, I didn't even know what I was doing, but this is what I was doing. At one point, I was trying so hard to eliminate sin. I would realize that this is a problem. I would focus upon it. I would work on it. And I probably was able to overcome that specific small sin. But as soon as I got that under control, something else cropped up. And this went on for years. And I realized how hard I try and I keep getting the things over my sins, there's always a multitude that just keeps coming.

I was doing it with my own strength, and my focus was upon the sin. So you may say that you try so hard to overcome sin, and you just can't be victorious. And that is correct because I was in that same position. But I would like to say that you are focusing upon the wrong thing.

Are you trying to overcome sin because you love God with all your heart, or is it because you want to go to heaven and you are afraid of hell?

There is a great difference between that.

And we sin because we are selfish. We sin because we want pleasure. We sin because we are thinking about ourselves. And it isn't about us. It's about God.

We need to focus on the kingdom of God, getting to know Jesus, focusing on holiness with God. I don't know if I can convey my thought and that it makes sense to you to understand the difference between focusing upon eradicating sin from our lives and focusing upon the kingdom of God.

We can create a very, very good facade with self-discipline. I was able to do that. I was actually considered a fairly good person. On the surface, before I started seeing the church, everybody was treating me as one of the best youth. I know that for a fact. I was looked up, even though I wasn't the oldest. I was looked up by the younger youth, and I had a very good cover. But inside, I was definitely not. So don't try to get your life into control of trying to put this big facade on yourself because basically all you're doing is people will think that you're good, but God knows better, and you know better as well.

So focus upon God and seek after the kingdom of God, and then He gives us that power to overcome.

And I would just like to put out this last call to all of us. Let us not be defeated Christians. Let us not be okay with sin in our lives and with bickering among ourselves. Let's unite and turn the world upside down.

Thanks for listening. All right. Thank you, Levi. Really appreciated everything that you shared. The talk was very encouraging and very biblical, getting our focus off of ourselves and onto the Lord Jesus and being honest. 1 John 1 says that if we walk in the light, which means to be open and honest and nothing's hidden, if we walk in the light as He is in the light, then we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses us from sin.

Thinking about the person that you met in Columbus that openly admitted that she was living in a way that wasn't compatible with what Jesus had, and she was choosing between one or the other, I would see a lot more hope for that kind of a person than the one that says, "Oh, I'm good. I'm a Christian," but obviously living in sin and believing that the two can go together. There's a lot of people like that. And I hear that in your story too when you just became open about where you were. And ultimately, it's about looking to Jesus and receiving His cleansing, His power, His forgiveness, receiving a new heart, and then going on with Him.

There's a lot of different comments that could be made. I just want to say that I appreciated everything you shared. I validate it as biblical and sound. Appreciate you being willing to share your story. And my prayer is that this talk would go out and minister to many more that will have the opportunity to listen to it. Like I said earlier, I do want to open it up. And if there's anybody that has a comment, word of encouragement for Levi or for the rest of us, I'll open it up now. And your opportunity is now. Just go ahead and make sure you're unmuted and speak up. Yeah, Levi, I'm happy to hear your testimony a little bit.

Obviously, I'm your brother, so I kind of remember a lot of things. I never knew what all was going on behind the scenes because I remember knowing that that marriage doesn't seem very good, but we didn't really know what was going on. It was, like you said, maybe a year or so after you were married.

And I remember us at home just saying, or one another, we might have said, "We don't think that marriage is very good," or whatever. I'm not sure how it went on, but. And we didn't really know what to do about it or where it's at. So yeah, it was kind of a very interesting to listen to because I knew where you were going in your stories and where it was at.

One thing that stood out to me is, and I think it's a very important thing in our life, is our focus on ourselves or is it on God? Are we doing good for the kingdom of God, or are we trying to do good so that we're recognized ourselves?

And that's something that was very important in my life because I discovered that if I try to do it for myself or if I'm trying to be important, the end result is always—I mean, that's pride. And the end result is always bad because something happens, and then you get knocked down, and then it hurts.

It's so much better and the right way to do it if you're doing it for God. So I really like that one. So yeah, you did a very good job, Levi. And it's probably extra interesting to me more than what it would be to the rest, but that's okay.

God bless you.

All right. Thank you very much, Adley. Appreciate those comments. Anyone else that would like to say anything? Well, good morning, Levi. I was very blessed and very inspired by your message here this morning. So you went from living a secretive life, living in darkness, and then coming to the light, confessing these things to your wife, probably doing something that you originally couldn't dream you would ever do, but I'm sure you found a lot of peace and liberty and life with coming to the light and confessing these things. In 1 John 1:6, it says, "If we say that we have fellowship with Him, but walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth." So if we're walking in that darkness, yeah, we're obviously living a lie.

But if we—then verse 7, "But if we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ, His Son, cleanses us from all sin." And the beauty of having fellowship with one another, the beauty of you finding fellowship with your wife, finding unity and oneness with her. And you also mentioned about the state of the church. I think it's a very sad thing.

Yeah, when I think of the church, that we're—yeah, the church. If I think across the landscape of our churches here in America, there's a lot of luxury, ease, wealth, materialism. We have about everything we want as far as earthly speaking.

But the big question is, do we have that fellowship? Are we walking in the light? Yeah. I think, yeah, as far as finding that fellowship is something I think we all want. But I think there's a challenge with opening up with one another that we experience many times.

For an example, if there's a brother that I maybe know something's not right in his life, do I feel comfortable approaching him? Would I feel comfortable if he would open up to me and start confessing the big, bad, ugly sins that he would have in his life? I think that's something we're afraid of many times. But that's the only way we're really going to have fellowship if we venture into conversations that are uncomfortable. But that's where the life comes from. That's where liberty comes from. As long as we're not talking about it, talking about things is one way, a big way of bringing things to light where it doesn't just remain in darkness and the bondage continues.

So may we have wisdom in opening up with each other, talking to each other, confessing our sins, and finding that fellowship and finding that freedom. So may God help us all. God bless you, Brother Levi, for sharing.

All right. Thank you for those comments, Brother Elam. I appreciate those as well. That's all very good. Lots of good things to think about here this morning. Is there anybody else that would like to come on and share anything? We'd love to hear from you. Just want to say this yet that in spite of all the problems in America, in spite of all the problems in the churches, in families, we all can look around and easily be discouraged. But I do want to say this. We live in a time of great opportunity. We have so many opportunities. And there's a lot of sincere believers left over compared to the amount of people that are in darkness.

Maybe it seems like very few, but there are many, many sincere believers around us and across the nation, around the world. Let's find each other. Let's go forward in good cheer and serve the Lord. We live in good times when we are in Him. Okay. Any other comments?

All right. Again, thank you, Brother Levi, for sharing. It was very, very much worth our time to be on here and worth your time and laboring to get ready. And may God be praised. Would you close us yet, Brother Levi, with a word of prayer?

Hey, Father, we humble you humbly this morning. We thank you for your Son, Jesus, for that redemptive blood that He shed for us. And Father, we thank you that you have provided a way that we can be cleansed and that we can be released from this bondage of sin. And Father, we just pray that you would inspire all of the listeners to this. We pray that you would give the increase and that those who are seeking for truth would be able to find you.

And Father, we pray that those of us who are seeking after you and are attempting to follow in your footsteps, that we would be strong. Give us strength to take up the armor and the sword and that we would fight the good fight. Give us strength to reach out to those who are lost and are seeking.

And Father, we just pray that you would glorify your name, that you would expand the kingdom, and that you would just continue blessing your church, that your church could be united, and that your church would be a powerful witness to the lost state. We pray this all in Jesus' name. Amen.

Guide me, O the great Jehovah, pilgrim through this barren land.