The Story of David Mast

Guide me, O the great Jehovah, pilgrim through this barren land. Good morning and welcome to everybody to Hope for Wandering Amish. On this platform, we have a talk first Saturday of each month at six o'clock, and we welcome you all to join us at that time. First Saturday of each month, six o'clock in the morning. This morning, we have David Mast from Hickory, North Carolina, joining us. We're excited to hear another testimony of God's grace and how He worked in David's life. Our vision here at Hope for Wandering Amish is to encourage Amish believers, in particular, to faithfully serve and walk with the Lord Jesus, be a disciple of Jesus.

And if we can encourage anybody else along the way, that's all the better. And thinking about the word hope and in Hope for Wandering Amish, hope in a believer's life is a very powerful thing. It puts spring in our steps and a gleam in our eyes and makes us look forward to tomorrow. So let's walk in hope. And before we get started here, I'd like to have a word of prayer.

Our gracious Redeemer, thank you for this opportunity this morning again to hear the testimony of how you have worked in a brother's life. Be with David as he shares, give him the words to speak, give him courage to say all that you would have him to say, and use this talk to the furthering of your kingdom. Thank you for the blessed reality of a living hope, and may that be real in all of our lives.

In Jesus' name, Amen. All right, David, time is yours.

Good morning, everyone. My name's David. I grew up in an Old Order Amish home, and currently we live in North Carolina. I live here with my wife and five children. I like how you said earlier, from about hope puts spring in our step and a gleam in our eye or something of that line. And I think that's very true.

And that's something that is a great blessing. And I think of Paul. Paul is saying in his letters, he describes the peace of God as the peace that passes all understanding. And I believe that's what it actually is, and it's something that we all long for. And when we discover that, it's something that passes all understanding.

Or maybe I should say when the peace of God comes into our life, especially for the first time. So I want to share my testimony this morning of how I grew up Old Order Amish. I wouldn't say I grew up in a Christian home. Our home setting was we had Bible reading, we had Christian values, but it wasn't particularly a Christian home.

I'm number six in a family of 16 children and sisters on both sides. Oldest brother is five years older. The next brother is, I believe, five years younger. And then there's younger brothers. So growing up, I tended to be a very independent type of person. There were things that I guess I would say I had the support of my siblings, like going to school, just things that happened.

My personality growing up was very determined or very self-willed, you might say. And I guess an instance I can just thinking back, recall, I didn't have the greatest relationship with my dad at all. And I could say that for all my siblings.

I tended to be, like I said, independent and just trying to my dad had a lot of depression problems, which I would say we probably all have some depression problem, but some of us seem to be able to deal with it better than others.

I guess I'll just jump to what led me to rendering my life to Lord Jesus. And I worked on a sawmill where we had some pretty hard labor, and we weren't afraid to work with our hands and get things done. And one day, I jumped across the carriage of the sawmill, where the carriage is where the logs are put on. And I landed on a small piece of wood that twisted my ankle, and I heard something distinctly pop.

I went lame for a couple of days, and it bothered me, but it seemed to kind of heal up. But then later on, when I was 16, it really fired up bad for me. And I could work during the day, but then at night, when I got off work and just after suppertime, I would sit down and my foot would start hurting. And it would hurt so bad. It was a really bad pain. There was really no way I could find relief for the pain. And I always think that's probably what drove me to seek the Lord, that, and also just things that had happened in my growing up, mostly my school years.

I had a tendency to lie, not on a regular basis, but I would say I was a liar and I stole some stuff and also a rebellion towards my parents. And I don't even remember exactly how old I was. I believe I was upper 16. I was just turning 17.

And one night, I went up to my room, and I felt it was at a time where things were just pressing in on me, and I felt very I was in honor. I felt very honored and not happy and depressed. And I had a problem with swearing. And that night, I really felt convicted that I'm not where I need to be with God.

Something needs to change. And I'd read my Bible, which was always in German, but I had some understanding of it. But it certainly wasn't like I understood what being born again was. I'd heard that phrase, but it never was expressed of what that looks like or that that's something that needs to happen.

And there was no expounding on that point of that we need to be born again or what happens when we become born again. So that night in my room, I was crying out to God. My foot was just hurting me really badly. I felt terrible and felt like I needed something. I didn't know what. I knew I needed something. So I cried out to God, and I just crying for help and to make a wonder, something there was an empty spot, and it needed to be filled. And very distinctly, I can remember I needed to make the choice. Am I going to serve God, or am I going to go into the world, live a party life, and just like some people say, when we're witnessing at the bar, we have a good time for a short time?

And it was very distinct. Either I choose to serve God, or I choose to go into the world, one or the other. So by God's grace, that night, I said, "Lord, I'll surrender my life to You. I'll live for You forever. And my life is Yours." And from that time, I remember falling asleep that night, and I had peace. I felt very at peace with God. I felt very like I made the right decision. I was just at rest, and I felt love towards people that I didn't appreciate the most or that I wasn't very appreciative of. And what happened after that, in my life, was really amazing. I remember going to work, and I felt like such a different person.

I was happy. I was at peace. I felt like singing. I felt like reading the Bible. I couldn't wait to get home at night to go up to my bedroom and read my Bible, even though it was reading in German that I didn't understand. I can understand German, but I didn't understand the context at all. And mostly, I understand German from what I heard it preached Sundays of what the Bible is teaching.

So I didn't have an understanding of it as of getting it for myself, but as it was interpreted by those who preached it on Sundays. I remember at work, there was one other person at work that I could share, and we could talk about the Word of God and the Bible. That was about the only person I felt comfortable at that time to share.

I would have liked to share with more people, but nobody had ever shared it to me. And I had never heard anybody else sharing to somebody else, especially not during the week.

Sundays, they might talk about it some, but not during the week. I would have probably been I thought I would have been looked at as odd. Possibly not. It would have been out of the ordinary. So I didn't want to step out of the ordinary at that time. I remember driving home one night, and I remember exactly where I was. And I think I was singing a song. I just got off work and driving my horse and buggy home. And I was like, "Wow." I just stopped my song that I was singing. I was like, "I am a different person."

I was like, "What happened?" There was a sin in my life, masturbation. I had a real problem with that. I didn't know. Nobody had ever taught me anything on the facts of life and that masturbation was wrong. But I felt convicted that it was wrong.

We were kind of left up to discover those things by ourselves, which is not a good thing. I would highly say that it's very important that we teach our children of these things because it's not the best. They will figure it out one way or another. And we can either, as parents, teach them and have them know it the way that they ought to know it, or we can have them figure it out themselves in a way that's detrimental. And so not knowing for sure masturbation was wrong, but I felt very convicted about it. I certainly didn't want to tell anybody about it. And that had completely disappeared in my life. I didn't even realize it had disappeared until about a month later.

I was like, "Wow, this disappeared." And I was like, "I didn't realize at the time that I believe I'd become born again." But later, like a year and a half, two years later, when I read in Galatians about what the fruits of the Spirit are: love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance, these things, I was like, "That is what had happened."

After we came to people that talked about being born again and kind of said what that looks like, I was like, "I think that happened to me back when I gave my life to the Lord and surrendered my life." But not having discipleship and not having someone there to teach me and help me to stay victorious, before too long, I was back in my sin. I met my wife soon after I turned 17. We started courtship. And I would say that's the first time that I really I remember when it dawned on me that here's someone that really actually cares about me. And it was kind of overwhelming that I had never experienced that in my home of someone that cared in a very deep way.

And I would say meeting my wife, and that was a time of a lot of growth, growing, and it's just a great blessing. It was a really big blessing for me. And we got married. And a couple of years later, my life hadn't completely gone back to its old life, but I still had this one sin in my life that had come back, and I just seemed to not have victory over it.

Soon after we got married, we bought a farm, lived on the farm.

I'm not sure what brought it up for sure. I started questioning the Amish way of doing church things, if it's biblical. I think probably what the main thing that brought it up was there. They call it Dina. It would be fellowship with whom they fellowship.

Some churches won't fellowship with another church based on what their material possessions are or what they allow as in material-wise in their ordinance letter. And I really started questioning that. Should that be dividing us? Should that be dividing one church from another? It wasn't even just that. It was things like it was very political. And I just felt like it was not of God. And if that's not of God, then what else is it that we're practicing that is not correct? And so I started reading the Bible. I started reading it in English. And I remember when I first started reading it in English, we were warned about, "You shouldn't read your Bible in English.

It's not the best," or, "It's not ideal. You should read it in German." That was good enough for our forefathers. It's probably good enough for us. But I started reading English just for it seemed so plain. It seemed like it was so understandable. I was like, "Well, this is probably not correct." But then on the other hand, I think it would have to be because so many people use it. So I took my German dictionary, and when I was reading through English, I would check it just to make sure it was the same as the German and the meaning was the same. And finally, after doing that through maybe one of the gospels, I was like, "I think it's just safe to just read it in English instead of having to check it all the time."

So I did. And some of those things that once I read it in English, standing context more, I just felt very much like we didn't have brotherhood. We didn't have to want another ink. There was a hierarchy in the church that wasn't supposed to be there according to scripture.

That was not the way that was not the church model that you find in scripture. So we lived in Wisconsin at that time. There was a church in Buffalo, Wyoming, that my wife's oldest sister was a part of. It was a fairly new church.

Talking to my brother-in-law, just what their goals are and what they practice and what they want to be expressing there, I really felt led to be a part of it. And we prayed a lot about it. We weren't sure.

We knew this would really disrupt our families, especially, I guess, on both sides of the family. All my siblings lived in the same community. My older brother talked a lot about moving to another different communities, but he actually never did it. And just him talking about it, I guess, I knew what the response would be from my family.

I felt a heavy weight on that we need to do something. We cannot just stay where we're at. So one morning, I decided we're going to move. And I brought this up to my family. And like I expected, it didn't go down very well. There was a lot of there was visits from my married siblings and from my dad trying to convince us this is not the right thing to do, that the church where we would join is too liberal.

We ended up moving and definitely feel like that was God's leading. We had to learn how it is to not have family, big community. This was a small community. Things didn't turn out as we had hoped. In that community, it was kind of like saying one thing.

It seemed like we all knew how it was supposed to be, but there was no leadership in making that happen. There was a lot of discord and disagreements and gossip going on there at that church and trying to work through things and trying to make it to where we're at. Our goals were, I would say, looking back, they were very inward-focused. They were very much focused on us, what we want as a church, instead of a focus on wanting to express the kingdom of God. And I would say we didn't bring up the kingdom of God. We didn't have an understanding of the kingdom of God. That's for myself.

I heard a lot in church about righteousness, the kingdom of God, the same as being born again. There was never an expounding on that, what it means to be part of the kingdom of God. We met a family out there that was attending that church, Moe's Miller.

And he presented a book to me called The Kingdom That Turned the World Upside Down. And we read that book. And wow, I started to find that I could line up the dots. And it was very liberating and very exciting reading that book and like, "Oh, yeah, this scripture makes sense. That scripture makes sense now." And you put it all together, and there's two different kingdoms. And if we are in the kingdom of God, then our outward expression is going to be our fruits are going to be that we are part of the kingdom of God. We cannot be part of the kingdom of this world and part of the kingdom of God.

That's perfect common sense that you cannot be a part of two kingdoms, as in giving your allegiance to two different kingdoms. So just discovering that. And I'll share how we got excommunicated, how that came about. We had some young people in the community there. And I guess some of the especially one of the older people of the community thought we were indoctrinating them in a way that was not good. We were being an influence. And we got questioned about how we feel on driving the vehicle, flying in a plane, things that separate the cutting line between being Amish or not Amish. If you practice certain things, we express that we wouldn't excommunicate somebody that drives a vehicle.

It just doesn't seem like that's a biblical practice at all. I'm not saying the practice of excommunication is unbiblical, but the practice of excommunicating someone if they drive the vehicle, if they go to drive in the vehicle. So by expressing that and just because we believed that even though we didn't practice that, we weren't driving the vehicle at that time, they used that as an avenue of excommunication. And the hardest thing for me was when we got excommunicated, they drug in two other families that I didn't know these families from the past. We had just met them for a year and a half, I want to say. It was probably a year and a half, two years that we lived in the community in Buffalo before we got excommunicated.

And I feel like they wanted to excommunicate these other two families. And they drug these other two families in with us, saying because they were I guess we were together.

We were very good friends. And they felt like they needed to excommunicate them as well, which was a very hard thing for me because they didn't particularly want to be excommunicated. Not that I want to say I wanted to be excommunicated, but it was kind of neither here nor there. If they excommunicate us, I'm fine with that.

My biggest concern was I want to be excommunicated because of Jesus, because of the Word, and not because of my own wants or my own not because of my own desires or for a reason that's not biblical. And remember the day we got excommunicated? My wife wasn't able to be there, which was probably a blessing in disguise.

I remember coming home and thinking, "Now what? I am excommunicated." And I just felt like I didn't have anything to go by on what is right and wrong. I was like, "Well, how do I know if I should do this or not or that or not? Or how can I" I almost felt like a fish out of water. And I was like, "Well, I need to trust in God. He will direct our path. He has so far. And if we keep ourselves humble before Him and our hearts are perfect towards Him, He will show us the way and guide us."

And He did. Was it two, three months later? I think it's three months later I started driving. We tried to work out things where we could be taken out of excommunication. I remember one time, I was really wishing that the ministry would come and speak to us. I thought that was the biblical process. That was their part to do, was to come and plead with us that we would come back if the Amish is the way, the way that we need to live, and that's the way that we get to heaven, I might say, which that's very much a focus in the especially in the community that I grew up. I can probably say this for most all Amish.

The focus is on getting to heaven. Do you want to get to heaven instead of more of a focus on serving the Lord Jesus? And then the side effects or the effects of that will be that we will someday be in heaven with Him. We will spend eternity with Him. And Jesus spent eternity in heaven, and that's where we'll be. We'll be with Him. There was no focus on that, I guess. It was more of a focus on getting to heaven rather than serving the Lord Jesus.

I'm not sure where I was going with this. But anyway, I think we need to focus on serving the Lord Jesus, and then we'll be with Him. And that's heaven. So there's another book I want to mention that I read.

The author was Barry Grant, and it was Awake, O Church. And I think it was probably that book that awoke me to the need to share the gospel. And just I guess it kindled a fire or something in me. And we need to be sharing the gospel with people and be active in that area. And that book really got me fired up. I ended up actually because of that, I got in contact with Barry. And it was a great blessing.

He's a very encouraging brother for me and for us.

I guess I'll continue where we started driving a vehicle because they weren't going to accept us back into the church other than on their terms. And their terms, we felt, were very unbiblical, something I guess I went to the extent of saying that we would be denying Jesus if we come back and accept what you require us to accept. We moved to a different place in Wyoming, which was out in the middle of nowhere.

We lived there for 11 months. And through that time, that was probably one of the most trying times in our lives, was through that time, we were all alone. We had each other. Our oldest child was five. We had three children at that time. It was a time of growing and a time of it was a blessing, but it was also a very difficult time to and we were seeking fellowship. We were seeking of where we should go to find fellowship. I didn't want to jump just into anything. I wanted to know people can say one thing, but if they practice another thing, I don't want to be a part of it. So I wanted to make sure that what they're saying and what they're practicing lines up.

And also just crying out to God to lead us in the right direction. I felt very much that we need brotherhood. We need fellowship. We need to do the one anotherings that are in the Bible. And we can do those as a single family. Only we can't fulfill all the scriptures just by ourselves.

I call them the one anotherings that are in the Bible, the things that we should do to each other, like Galatians 6 where it says, "Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ." I think that's a very powerful scripture. We fulfill the law of Christ by bearing one another's burdens.

God led us to North Carolina where we joined a Koinonia Christian Fellowship. And that's where we are fellowshipping at this time. And we find that there's one family here. There's two with us. We find it a great blessing to be here with Brother Mark and his family and having brothers and sisters and having unity of the spirit instead of having a spirit of unity. As I feel like the Amish strive for a spirit of unity, they want unity. But how they get that unity or how to obtain that unity, I guess I would say their method is wrong. I feel like it's not the correct one according to scripture. And I would be open to correction on that as in all my other things.

I'm not saying that I'm completely set on that, but I do question it, I should say.

There's one thing I skipped over, and I think I started talking about this, about the ministry. I was wishing the ministry would come to us and speak to us. And I thought that was the thing they should do to bring us back into the church. But they never did. They never actually came in person other than one time. I had promised to my parents that I will see what I can do, that we can come back and be part of this Amish church. And so I called up the bishop. I got in contact with him. I told him what I'd like to do. And they were very willing to work with us. And I said, "Well, why don't you" I invited them to stop by and just stop in, and we can talk about it instead of trying to do it over the phone.

So they did. And they stopped in. We talked a little bit. They didn't have much time. And it wasn't very long. We'd seen that it just doesn't seem like this is possible. There are requirements that we would have to follow in order to be part of the church again. And one thing that distinctly I think of, I remember, is I remember telling him that, "You see, I don't think it would be good if we come back to the church and we feel the way we do about what scripture is teaching.

And it's just not going to work because it's going to disrupt your thing. It's not because we're not in agreement on it. And I think you need to convince me that what you practice is scriptural. And only once I'm convinced should I come back and join once I agree to it." And he agreed to that. But he said, "Here's the thing. You can come back and join us, but just be quiet. Don't express your convictions."

And I was trying to be polite and not rude. But I thought of they said pretty much that exact thing. The Pharisees said that to the apostles, "Don't preach in the name of Jesus." I can't quote the exact verse.

But they were told to be quiet. "Just be quiet, and we'll let you go. Just be quiet. And you can come back, and you can live Amish. You can have your family back, but just be quiet." And I said, "Well, we can't do that. I don't think that would be something that we could do." And that was kind of the last time that we had any contact of going back to the Amish. We have no desire to go back. There's a lot of good things there. But then there's other false religions. This might be kind of strong, but there's other false religions that also have good things. So we should embrace the Bible, embrace the teachings of the Bible, embrace it and practice it.

And that will lead us in the right direction. And yeah, another thing I wanted should would be a good thing to share, I guess, is when we first got excommunicated, I never thought we'd be rebaptized. But there's three times that people came to me, three different times, three different people from the Amish that I talked to. And they said, "Well, David, you can't leave because of what you promised when you were baptized." And so if they expound on that, when you get baptized, you promise to stay with that church leading to life or death.

And to me, I remember distinctively when we got baptized I got baptized when I mean, the wife got baptized at the same time when I was 17. And I remember distinctively when they asked me that question about promising to stay with this church, may it lead to life or death, I felt very uncomfortable about it. But I did answer it as a yes. I felt like they were referring to it or referring to the church as in who you see sitting in this room, the Amish church, the Amish kingdom. And I would say, sure enough, three times, somebody spoke to me, and they said, "We need to come back because of what we promised in baptism."

I was like, "I promised to serve the Lord Jesus and not a church. I was baptized into the Lord Jesus." Well, it turns out I believe I felt convicted. It turns out that we were not baptized into the Lord Jesus to be His disciple. But they used the scriptures and brought them in to baptize us into their church.

So we did get rebaptized. I struggled with it quite a long time. And I felt very much at peace when I decided to go ahead and get rebaptized. And I do not regret that we did that.

I think that's where I'll stop. And if somebody has questions, comments, or rebukes, I'll be very happy to share. All right. Thank you, David, for sharing all of that. That was very interesting, edifying, how you went from reading the scriptures and reading solid literature and searching to finding. And then I thought it was interesting how you went from living in the middle of nowhere out there somewhere to a small brotherhood in North Carolina.

The question I have for you, were you ever tempted to just go mainstream, just find some church in town that says they love Jesus but really don't put a lot of Sermon on the Mount, for example, a lot of Jesus' teachings to practice?

Were you ever tempted to go that route? And then why didn't you? Part of our vision on here is to help believers in their searches to find solid biblical churches and to live the historic faith instead of going mainstream and being deceived by some cheap grace way of living.

Yeah, tell us about it. Were you ever tempted to go that way, and why didn't you? I think that's a very good question, Evan. That's a very important question that we all need to ask ourselves. No, I wouldn't say I ever was tempted to do that. But I would say I was tempted to throw it all out. I would have either thrown it all out because I knew that the easy grace, the rock band, I call them smoking lights type of churches, or even a Baptist church, that is not what the Bible teaches. Now, when I say I was tempted to throw it all out, this was at times this was very, very I could get it all on one hand or times that I felt that way.

And it lasted for just not even five minutes. It was just a bout of depression or whatever you want to call it, just the scarcity of people who there's not a scarcity of people who claim to be Christians, but there is definitely a scarcity of the amount of people if you figure the amount of people who say they're Christians and they're living a life that doesn't match up with what scripture plainly teaches.

It was very discouraging to me. That was probably the most discouraging part, is seeing these people professing to know the Lord but not doing what He says, not doing what scripture says. And one of the main that was actually part people asked me, "Well, what brought us here?"

Or more than once, I've told people that we couldn't find the church in all that big town in Wyoming. There was a bigger town close by of I'm not sure whether 20,000 people. There's a lot of churches there. There's not one church that I could be comfortable to be part of. They're not willing to accept what the Bible teaches about divorce and remarriage.

They don't practice the head covering, which is very plain in 1 Corinthians 11. They don't practice ideal resistance that Jesus teaches. And I never felt tempted to just go and join one of these churches. I've been to those type of churches, just attending.

And no, it never was a temptation. And I would say people who have a temptation to do that, read your Bibles, and you will see the three points that I brought out. And there's probably more that they do not practice what the Bible teaches. Now, if they're willing to practice that, great.

That's good. But if they're not, don't be a part of it because we probably tend to think that we're not influenced by who we surround ourselves with or what literature or what content we take in. But I think that's one of the biggest things that helped me just navigating through discovering technology. And at the time when we discovered technology and started using it, we didn't have any other people to ask about. And we just navigated through it. And we had to make convictions. And we need to build convictions about things that are wrong. And we needed to get rid of some false senses of guilt that we had about things that were not wrong.

And yeah, it was very much a time of growing while we lived in Wyoming. We lived there two years, three years, real close to three years.

So yeah, those three points. People, they don't practice the head covering. They don't practice biblical divorce and remarriage. And I call it ideal resistance of not taking up arms. And maybe a lot of it is ignorance that we have so many people who leave the Amish, and they just go to mainstream and smoking lights type of churches. And maybe it's because it's a lack of information. But if you want the information, it's there.

I don't think this we are not lacking in information. If something, we are lacking in navigating through taking in the good information and leaving the bad because remember, we will be influenced by who we surround ourselves with and what we take in.

That can be a we can look at that as a curse or a blessing. I look at it as a blessing because we can be intentional about it. Yeah. Thank you for that. So thirsting after the living word is what will keep us going the right way.

Appreciate that. Amen. All right. Is there anyone else that has any comments, questions for David? Good morning, Brother David. I really appreciate what you shared here this morning. Yeah, you brought up the book that you read, The Kingdom That Turned a World Upside Down by David Perseu.

That book has been very revolutionary for a lot of people. And see, the thing is, we all read the Bible with a certain lens. And us, when we read the Bible, it needs to come back to reading it through the lens of what Jesus taught, the life that Jesus lived, and all that. And then it'll make a lot more sense. So The Kingdom That Turned a World Upside Down really explains things well, the kingdom of God versus the kingdom of this world. And it really explains what our marching orders are in the kingdom of God based on what Jesus taught, based on how Jesus lived, based on the way His disciples lived. So yeah, that's a beautiful thing.

There's so many Christians and so many churches that live lives and teach things that you can when you look at Christ and what Christ taught and the way Christ lives, it's like there's hardly anything there to compare.

There's so many things that have where they've veered off the path so far that it's hard to make the connection. Okay, you're a Christian, you're a church group, you're Christian people, but where's the life of Christ in your community?

So yeah, I'm really encouraged what you shared. And I'm really encouraged that we can make a difference going forward, helping people returning back to what Christ taught and live the life of Christ and so on. So anyway, thank you so much. And God bless you. And may God give you and your wife many more rich years to come. And yeah, be faithful.

Thank you.

Yeah. Thank you, Brother Elam. We want to be faithful. The Bible says, "Even if we don't stay faithful," I might be paraphrasing, "He abides faithful." So that's a blessing. God is faithful. It's not that God fails. It's that either we don't have honest hearts or we are not searching. And God will give us a hunger and thirst for the Word. If we don't hunger and thirst for the Word, there's prayer. And God wants to give it. That's a good thing. And God wants to give us that. He will not refuse us if we humble ourselves before Him and ask Him for that. I wanted to share the book. I don't know if you can see that.

That's the book, The Kingdom That Turned a World Upside Down, in case if somebody wants to find it. Or I would highly recommend that book, especially if you're coming from an Amish background. And it has some really good points it did for me. And it was a great blessing, so.

Yeah. I should just add here as well, if we're calling ourselves Christians, if we are Christians or whatever, and Christ's teachings and Christ is not the center of our life, there's a lot of confusion. And it'll keep us from being fruitful. But if Christ is in the center of our lives and He's the ultimate one that we are truly following, how can we truly be following Christ if we're not actually following His teachings? It doesn't make any sense. So anyway, I feel like the book, The Kingdom That Turned a World Upside Down, it has helped me a lot seeing some of those things in a more clear way.

Yeah. Yeah. Appreciate all of that. Thank you. Is there anyone else, any thoughts yet here before we close? I guess I should also mention sorry for keeping on talking. It's not that the Bible isn't enough or we have the Holy Spirit, we have the Bible. It's not that it isn't enough. What the problem is, the lenses in which we use to read the Bible is the problem. So we need the proper lenses. And Christ Jesus Himself gives us the proper lenses. And the proper lenses in reading the Bible is in light of His teachings and life and therefore us today.

Yeah. Yeah. That's well said. Thank you, Elam. Okay. Anyone else? Yeah. I just am very encouraged with you, David, for this morning, for sharing. I went through a little bit the same experience. And one question I had, though, is I don't know that you mentioned it. Maybe you did, and I just didn't hear about assurance of salvation.

When I left the Amish and was excommunicated, one of the things that was an issue for me was the assurance of salvation in the Amish church. And I'm wondering if that had come up for you as well. Are you speaking as of having assurance?

So saying we have hope. Growing up Amish, you didn't know if you were saved or not. I think that's pretty scary. If you don't know you're saved, it's like I was telling someone, "If I don't know if you ask me if I'm a sinner and if I have to say yes, it better dawn on me that I need to repent and I need to do something because what if I died right now and I'm a sinner? Sinners don't go to heaven. Thanks to former sinners, they will be with the Lord Jesus, not sinners. So if I have to say I'm a sinner, then I better repent and I better become surrendered to the Lord Jesus and give my life to Him."

And having a no, that was something that we had to navigate through as well, just understanding how this works. How can you know that you're saved without being the that was the heresy of people who left the Amish. Now they're saying they're sure of their salvation. That was a heresy. And the thing is, the Bible doesn't teach that. It teaches that we can know if we're saved.

We need to live our it's a way of life. We need to live our life according to what scripture says. Scripture says, "If any man fall, we have an advocate with the Father." It doesn't say when you fall. And it says if. So there's a possibility of walking. There's a possibility of being upright and being so yeah, I would say that was definitely something for us to work through, that and also faith, the whole thing of works. Are we works-based? If works don't matter, why are we even doing this? Just navigating through that and having an understanding of what it looks like to be doing our to walk in faith and to do the things out of faith, not out of, "Well, I have to if I want to get to heaven."

I don't know if that answers your question. If it doesn't, if you could direct it more specific, I could try to answer that better. More, if the ministers challenged you on that because that's one thing I was challenged from the Amish ministers is what I had meant. But apparently, you weren't. So no, that's fine.

So that's the thing. The ministers never showed up to us. I can think of only one time, and that was most my dad, my brother, and one of my brother-in-laws, that it came up about being saved, knowing that we have salvation.

I quoted the verse where it says, "By this, you can know or you know that you have eternal life because you love the brethren." What does that mean? Do we make God out to be a liar if He says that we have eternal life if we love the brethren? I take it that's what He's saying.

Well, if we're not loving the brethren, then we would say, "Yes, we don't know if we're going to be saved." And we don't know as in it's done. We only know as in God is faithful. He has said this. If we are doing this by faith, then we know we're saved. But it's a continual thing. It's not a once-and-done type of thing.

I want to clarify, though. Salvation, I believe, is an instantaneous thing. It's not a sanctification is a process. Okay. Thank you for that. Appreciate it. All right. Very good. It's been a good morning here. We're almost at 7 o'clock.

Give one more chance here for somebody to say something if you'd like to. Otherwise, we'll bring this to a close. All right. Well, thank you, David, coming on, sharing your life story. May God be glorified, and may you continue to walk with Him. May we all grow in grace and in knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and be faithful witnesses till He returns.

David, would you close us in prayer here yet, please? Yes. And thank you for having me on. And I wanted to say I appreciate the vision for Hope for Wandering Amish. I think it's a good vision and continuing it. So let's have a word of prayer.

Father, we come before You. We are so thankful, Father, that we're called Your children and that we can be Your children through Your Son, Jesus. Thank You for redemption. Thank You for what You did on that cross for us. Thank You for the resurrection, Lord, that we can have life and have life abundant through Your Son, Jesus. Lord, I pray that You would bless each of these brothers as they go about their day. Lord, be with us and guide and direct, Lord. And we pray that Your kingdom would be lifted up, would be built up. Your name would be glorified again.

And help us to be Your hands and feet to bring the good news to those that are wandering in darkness and in sin. And Father, we thank You for all the many blessings. We love You, and we pray this in Jesus' name.

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