Proof That Jesus Changes Lives // Roberto Stevenson

Not unto us O Lord, but unto your name be the glory and the honor and the praise. It's a pleasure to be here. The first service was the first time I preached in English in six months. That wasn't an excuse. So now there's no excuses in the second service.

I bring you greetings from my family. A couple pictures here, that's me. We have services outside once a month and we have a lot of revival services in open air. That's why I have the hat and the sunglasses. Family, there we go. My son is with me. He's back in the booth.

Behind me on this side, even though she looks too young to be my wife. That's my wife over on this side. In the middle with the glasses is my daughter, Rebecca. My daughter-in-law, Elen Flores. That's my granddaughter up at the top with the smiley face. She's 10, almost 11.

And six months ago, he wasn't available for the picture, is our latest grandson. Listen to this, Elias Elijah Roberto Stevenson Flores. Made in Mexico. And we say, ello en México bien ello. Made in Mexico. Good. That's the family that bring you greetings. Also, greetings from the church that by the grace of God I pastor or the churches it's called Promised Land Church in Mexico City.

Your pastors were there last year. They left an impact. They left a blessing, lives were touched. When I told them I was coming here, they were, you know, basically the whole church was like, "Yeah, bring our greetings." In Mexico, it's a big thing to bring our greetings. And this morning I'm going to give more testimony.

I have some photos of the church, but let's go to Matthew 16. The title of my message is 'hell will not win'. "Hell will not win". I said I wasn't going to say anything else in Spanish, but it's got some power in Spanish. Hell will not win, it's talking about the church.

This text I'm in Matthew 16:13. When we say hell will not prevail, hell will not win, we're talking about the church. I was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1954. I didn't say that in the first service. I was a little embarrassed of it. And I was born again in 1981.

I'll share about that. But I was raised in Washington DC and today as you know because of the world news, all the media outlets so many eyes are on Washington DC but what I sense is the eyes of the Lord are on the Tri-Cities area in Washington state and the authority and the power that are flowing and will flow out of Washington state through this network of churches because you are a network of churches now and you preparing and sending out and the nations will come, they already have.

This is a prophetic word that's now and not yet, but it will be. Pastor Vlad, the nations will come and they will glorify the name of the Lord and they will worship here in this place and many will be sent out to the nations. So the authority and the power and the wisdom and the healing for the nations will come more out of Washington State than out of Washington DC.

Man, how people are when there's times turbulent turbulent times and troubled times which are prophesied in the last days. Paul said dangerous, violent times will come. And people look to the government, people look to politicians. They look to the White House. I learned years ago to look to God's house, the church of the living God.

That's where the answers are. That's where the power is. That's where the healing is. Matthew 16 when Jesus verse 13 when Jesus came into the region of Caesarea Philippi, He asked His disciples saying, who do men say that I am? So they said, some say John the Baptist, some Elijah, and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.

I'll just say this here. They were wrong then about who Jesus was. And I can't bet, I was going to say I bet if I was a betting man, I would bet that most of your neighbors and people you work with, if you ask them, "Who is Jesus?" they would be just like in the text, they'd be wrong, they wouldn't get it right.

But here comes the important one. He turns to him and he says, "But who do you say that I am?" That's an important question. Simon Peter answered and said, "You are the Christ, Messiah, the son of the living God." Jesus answered and said to them, "Blessed are you, Simon Bar- Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but My Father who is in heaven.

And I also say to you that you are Peter, you are Petros, large stone. Jesus changed his name, you remember, from a wimp Simon to a stone. But then He says on this rock which is Petra. Petra is like those rocks when we drove yesterday morning from Portland, Oregon from the airport, those rocks that are by the river, beautiful, beautiful drive.

Let me tell you, never been to this part of the world. That's Jesus. He's the Petra. On this rock, I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it. That's where I get, hell will not win, against the church of Jesus Christ. But before we talk about the church and I have testimony to give, who do you say I am?

Who do you say Jesus is? That question, your answer to that question will determine how you live the rest of your life here on earth. That's important. That would be important in and of itself. I've come to give you life and life more abundantly. But it also will determine your legacy, your family, you should rejoice.

This morning I met Vlad's parents, his uncle, his aunts. This morning, his grandparents, their parents received Jesus in a time and in a place that was difficult to walk with Jesus with much persecution. But they made a decision to say, "Jesus, you are our Lord Whatever comes, it doesn't matter.

You're going to be our Lord. We're going to follow you. And that decision is one of the reasons that HungryGen is right here in this beautiful new building today. Because of the decision your grandparents made. So who Jesus is determines the life you'll live the rest of your life here.

It determines your children and your children's children, the life that they'll live. And it definitely determines where you will spend all of eternity, who Jesus is. Peter could have said, he said, "Messiah, you're the, He went He took it all. He knew it. You're the prophesied one. You are the one that's coming to crush the serpent's head to kill him.

You're the lion of the tribe of Judah. You're the Passover lamb. You're the one that changed my name the day you met me. You're the only one that has words of eternal life. Jesus, if they ask me 45 years ago now, Jesus, I say, you're the one that came to seek and save that which was lost, me.

I started using drugs in high school in Washington DC, Northern Virginia. Thought I was cool. Thought I'd never get addicted. Started selling marijuana. In Oregon, marijuana is recreationally legal. I went by three stores coming from the airport when I could walk in and buy marijuana with a driver's license.

I got arrested for growing and selling marijuana. They sent me to do community service for six months. Came out and continued doing it. Had I thought, I was cool. I got other connections. I started selling pills. I started selling harder drugs. I had connections in the inner city and I'd sell the drugs in the universities, in the suburbs.

Got arrested again and I was in prison three months and they sent me to a rehab which was like a country club for a month and a for a year and a half. got out, made some more connections, still selling drugs, quit going to school, got busted for the third time, went before a federal judge because it was interstate.

And I said, "Oh, man." I was in prison without couldn't make the bond. And I said, "Oh yeah, I'm going to go to rehab or, you know, I'll be out of here in no time." And the judge said, "9 to 21 years." He wanted to make an example of this young white boy 20-23 years old, went to prison.

This is why I would say Jesus who are you? You're the one that comes to seek and save that which was lost. During this time I missed this in the first service. My mom who was a nominal Methodist, she gave her life to Jesus and got baptized in the Holy Spirit.

That's the difference. That's a big difference. When I got over being fearful in prison, after a few months, you go in, you're scared your life has ended. You got nine years. You're going to have to do minimum before you can get paroled. I started doing the same things in prison that I was doing outside of prison.

Ripping and hustling and and doing drugs. And I got arrested more than once in the prison. It was a medium to easy federal prison. And when I got arrested and put in the hole in the prison that I was in, I got word they never let me out of the hole.

I was almost 30 days administration, administrative segregation. If you didn't know what the hole, it's not like he put you in a hole. He put you in a cell by yourself. And I got word of a disciplinary transfer. I'd been in prison about three years and something. And I was going to a harder prison, a more maximum security prison as a disciplinary action.

On the way to that prison, we were in the state of Kentucky. Never been there before, never been there after, but I remember it. Fayette County Jail in Kentucky. And as federal prisoners, we were put in a segregated area. And I got put in a cell 23 and a half hours a day.

You got out for a half an hour, take a shower, walk. There was a New Testament and it was a New Testament. Never forget it. I still have it. Good news for modern man with little drawings in it. And I began to read that New Testament. We were there probably for a month.

Can't remember all the days. And after reading Matthew and Mark and looking at the little pictures in the New Testament, now I know it had a lot to do with the grace of God and Jesus who came to seek and save that which was lost. And Jesus who came to set the captives free and Jesus and the Lord God who doesn't want any to perish, but all to come to repentance.

That's who He is to me today. He's my glory. He's my shield around about me everywhere I go. He's the one that lifts up my head. But He, that the cell, it had a lot to do with my mom's prayers. The legacy and it's sometime in the late at night I was already on the floor.

I didn't have to fall on the floor because there's a light bulb in the hallway where the cells were and I'm reading that Bible. I'm already on my knees and I gave my life to Jesus and everything changed. I don't remember if it was Matthew or Mark or Luke, but everything changed.

I got moved. I got moved to a more maximum security prison. And this is where the importance of the church. I got to that prison. I was in quarantine 40 days. When you get to a federal prison, even though I'd been in prison for three and a half years.

Yeah. I got put in quarantine. I'm reading the Bible. There's some guys I got hold of some Christian books and testimonies while I was in quarantine. It was actually a very good time 40 days quarantine. I could get some time in the wreck yard and but I was mostly locked down.

I got out. I get my tray in the cafeteria. This is Danbury Federal Correctional Institute in Kentucky, Connecticut. I'd never been to Connecticut before after that. And I walk out with my tray of food. In a federal prison, you do not just sit anywhere like at a high school or in high school.

You don't sit where you want probably anymore. So I walk out and I see a black brother and a white brother with their hands like this with their food and they're praying. So I walk up and I wait till they finish praying. I said, "Are you guys Christians?

Can I sit here?" And they looked at me and they says, "You're a Christian?" And for the first time ever, I confessed with my mouth and I said, "I'm a born again Christian." I told them. They said, "Have a seat." These guys discipled me. They said, "You need to be in the church."

My idea of his church was, you know, look at the church. Here's the steeple. Open it up. See all the people? That kind of stuff. There's a church behind the walls in a prison. 11 months I was discipled. These men discipled me. Leonard Fields, black brother, took me under his wing.

Taught me how to read the Bible. Taught me how to memorize verses. I'm 11 months in. I'm not anymore conniving and thinking, "Oh, how am I going to get out? How am I going to get out?" On a Sunday night service, we had people come in from the streets.

Prison ministry, that's what we said. No, they're coming in from the streets. And this particular night, I would always go up when they called. You know, if it was probably here, the pastor would say, "You were here the last three weeks. You can go back to your seat."

So, I went up. A guy hugs me, shaken. He begins to speak into my life and he says, "I see you with at Christmas, you'll be worshiping with your mother in your mother's church." He said, "Before you're 30 years old, you'll preach this gospel in a language that you know not."

That's 27 years old, been saved for 11 months. And then they say, "Roll call." So, everybody has to go back to the cells or the dorms. And when they're going back, the guy that prophesied had to let me go because the people from the street have to move off to the side to let all the prisoners out.

And you know, I can't make this up. And he said, "And if you want this to be true, no food." He said, "You won't drink no water, no food for three days and three nights, just like Esther and just like Paul." And I'm like, "Whoa." But we have to hurry out.

So Leonard, he's my pastor in prison, says, "Oh, brother Robert," he said, "that's a prophetic word." There were some other things he said too that I can't really s share with you. He said, "Write it in your Bible." And I did. And I still have the that Bible.

It's all worn out. So, I wrote these things down. You'll be home at Christmas. You'll worship with your mom before you're 30. You'll preach the gospel in another language. And then he says, and we get to our our cell doors and he says, "Brother Robert, the Lord's been speaking to me about fasting."

He was a backslide pastor's son in prison also for selling drugs in New York City. And he says, "Let's do this." And we made a he prayed and he made a pact with the Lord that we're going to fast three days and three nights. I'd never I didn't even know really what that was.

And then he says, "And be careful when you brush your teeth, you don't swallow any water." So, man, I'm careful. I'm brushing my teeth. And that's this is how we fasted. On the third day, we were meeting during the meal times off to the side of the wait room in the prison.

And I got there, three days of fasting. I thought I was going to die. And Leonard didn't show up. And I'm praying and I had the most vivid vision. I didn't see his face. I didn't see above the shoulders and the hands outstretched to me. Heard the voice of the Lord telling me, "You will give testimony to me in many nations.

You'll travel in many nations. You'll learn languages. And and I've called you and I am with you." and can just think and he said I'm your bride. You're my bride. A guy in prison doesn't want to hear that he's somebody's bride. This is real for week, for days.

Leonard explained it to me in the book of Revelation and Ephesians that the church is the bride of Christ. But you know it was weird. Leonard comes in with a couple other guys and I heard one of them say, "Look, Brother Robert's speaking Chinese because God had given me gift of tongues, baptism of the Holy Spirit."

I I didn't know I wasn't speaking Chinese. They just that was their perception. And and a few days later, I got called up to the administrative offices. When I did this in the first service, it moved me. I'm filled with the Holy Spirit. I got the my I'm in my first love and to go to the administrative office.

They called me. I don't call you don't call them. They put a chain around you and shackle your hands with handcuffs and you're walking like this. And I'm full of the Holy Spirit. And for the first time in my life, I'm free. If the who the son makes free is free indeed.

And I do the long walk down the hallway. They sit me down in front of the table. The assistant warden says with curse words, he said, "I don't know how you did this, Stevenson, because I had a bad record in my first few years." He said, "But your sentence has been reduced from 9 to 21 to 3 to nine."

He said, "You're going home in 15 days." December 2nd, 1982, I was on a bus. December 24th, I was worshiping with my mom in this large Baptist church in Washington DC. And then she gets me an appointment with the pastor. That's why I said, "Lord, not unto us, but unto Your name be the glory."

When I began the preaching this morning. And and I lived the church in prison for 11 months. I missed the guys at first, but cause the church in prison, there's a total segregation between races. I mean, it just is. Hispanics are with Hispanics, and even then, Mexicans are with Mexican, Puerto Ricans are with Puerto Ricans, and African-Americans are with African-Americans, and whites are with whites, and there's a separation.

But in the church, in prison, we worshiped the Lord to each other. We loved each other. We prayed for one another. I had a taste of what the church is supposed to be. Because the church that Jesus Christ is building, number one, it's His. It doesn't belong to the one who's been here the longest or the one who gives the most money or the rich businessman.

The church belongs to Jesus Christ. And the church doesn't know. The only color the church of Jesus knows is the blood red that was shed on the cross. It doesn't know black, yellow, red, and white. And I lived that in prison. I got to my mom's church. It wasn't exactly the same.

But I told the pastor because she got me an appointment. There's a church of over a thousand members back in 1982-83. And I told him my whole story. And he's a Baptist. And he's like, "Listen." He did pick up the phone and call for other pastors to come in his office.

And I thought they were going to send me out on the mission field the next week, preach the gospel in another language, go to the nations. and he sent me to the children's ministry to be the assistant in the kindergarten class. And at first, but I loved it.

I preached two times when the 16-year-old girl that was in charge of that class, and she was strict on me. She said, "Now, I'm going on vacation with my parents the month of August, and you're in charge of the class, and here's the lesson plan." My mom made cookies and milk, and I had all them kids sitting there.

I'm preaching the gospel to them. After a year, the pastor called me and said, "You still feel like you're called to the nations." We started a coffee house ministry in the north of Mexico. We're sending a married couple and we have a young man who's already there who speaks Spanish, one Antonio Mazariegos, and we would like he's asking for another young man to walk with him, to evangelize with him.

That's how I got to Mexico, two weeks before I turned 30. I got to go quick. I'd been preaching, giving testimony in the streets. I could give a a fair testimony in Spanish in one-on-one evangelism. And he said, "You're going to preach Friday night at the coffee house."

And he said, "But Raquel is not going to translate for you." That was on Monday or Tuesday. So, I had three days. Two weeks before I turned 30 with little index cards with everything written down, I preached the gospel in Spanish and people got saved. I said, "Whoa."

So, I was there. This is I'll go quickly. I'll build my church. I was there over a year, learned Spanish, 1984. Some guys came from an Assembly of God Bible College and they were saying all these big words like hermeneutics and soteriology and eschatology. And if you cannot believe this, I'm a seminary professor by Zoom in Wesley Biblical Seminary now.

But then these words were like I was impressed and I was saying and I was saying I don't know any of this, man. I'm out here. What am I doing out here as a missionary? I don't even know these words or I don't know anything about it. So they gave me they told me the school I applied.

I got accepted. I went to Bible college. Praise the Lord. Wonderful time. Met my wife, Bonnie. And then we said, "We're going back." You we're going back to Mexico. 1988. Came to Mexico. We were in a very rough area. My son, who's back there now, he was born there.

Rough neighborhood, el barrio de Iztapalapa. My son likes to say I was made born and bred in Iztapalapa. And the upper class of Mexicans when he shares that in his testimony, they're like, "Really? I don't even want to. But when I go to that, I drive past that neighborhood when I go there.

And we by the grace of God, we were there three years and a little bit over. And I had a goal and I prayed and I wrote it down. My plan was 120 people because of the book of Acts. There was 120 in the upper room. And Lord, after three and a half years, we had 120 people in the church.

That's what I said. But I said that now that I'm trying to plant churches in a technical, you know, and I'm reading books on it and I'm teaching on it. I'm saying, man, 120 people in three years and my wife didn't even speak Spanish. That was, you know, the Lord blessed us.

I understand that now. And then we went to go plant a church in another place and I was preaching on the streets. That's what we do with like two speakers and a walkman. Anybody remember a Walkman where you put a cassette in there? You just dated yourself. You you keep that hand down.

These young people, they don't even know what You don't even know what a Walkman is, do you? You put a cassette in it and you closed it and you plugged it into speakers. So, I'm preaching on the streets and a Catholic priest shows up to the preaching. I'm a little nervous because we had had oranges thrown at us and other things when we did this preaching in the street markets.

And as I'm preaching, he begins to applaud. So, I left the microphone. I went and met this Catholic priest. He had been radically saved, born again for four years. He's still a Catholic priest. He's still saying mass, doesn't know anything else, but he knows Jesus and he's preaching the Bible.

And we became friends. And in 1997, he was pressured and he renounced not only the priesthood, but he also renounced the Roman religion as he says, and he laid low for a little while and in 1999 he came to me and he says I want to plan some evangelistic services.

He wanted to do 40 nights and that even as a Christian that I mean we missionaries and the Pentecostal preachers and stuff we'll do three nights you know we'll do Saturday, Sunday and Monday. This ex-catholic priest says I want to do 40 nights. The 40 nights turned into 400 Monday through Monday.

After 123 straight nights, we were invited to give testimony in Pensacola where they were having a revival. He preached, I gave testimony. It was good. This was like 1999 or something. I mean, the presence of God was there in Pensacola strong in Florida. And he saw that they only had revival services like Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday.

So, he comes back and says, "We're going to rest. This is our revival services that we had. There's one brother here that's been in this church for a long time and he's here in the service right now. And we went 400 nights. The lowest crowd we ever had was 300.

We had to do it outside. There was no, we couldn't fit inside. We had crowds in the parking lot on Saturday and Sundays. After a night 40, we had like 20,000 people. People got healed, obviously got delivered. This is the camp that during that time of revival, the Lord gave us a property outside of the city and we did six weekends a year when the weather wasn't rainy.

We went out there. There's probably 30,000 people that fit there. So, also, oh, also the prophecy I got in prison is, "And one day you will preach before multitudes." You know, when I had 120 people, that was like for me that was a multitude, Vlad. It was a multitude.

And I almost forgot about that part of the prophecy, but I wrote it down. And out of that, we have the baptisms. During, towards the end of the revival, Pastor Aurelio, the ex- Catholic priest, was still alive. I've been the head pastor for 21 years since he was in heaven.

And we built a pool and we've baptized it as many almost two. That's Pastor Aurelio. That's one month before he died and he made me the the head pastor of the church as a like the missionary evangelist. Go back to the pool. That was pretty cool. Look at that.

Look at that. Look at that. We have baptism Saturday. I got to hurry back to Mexico. We have during the revival as a result of the revival. One week we went and we baptized 999. two weeks, two months later, we went back and we baptized like 1,200 and something.

This is in one day cause you put like 30 men in 30. You were baptized there, weren't you? Yeah. Yeah. He was baptized there. He a big guy, man. We get So we just stand there and we go in the name of the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit.

Hallelujah. Be baptized. And then the people that are in the pool, women on one side, men on another, they baptize them like that and bring them out and they walk out and then we sing some worship and then more people walk in. You could and we start sometimes, we don't even start baptizing till like 10 or 10:30 and by 3:00 we've baptized a thousand people.

We still do this twice a year. But now also what came out of that and the reason we can even fit in the place we are and this is definitely of God. For the last 21 years since I've been the head pastor by the grace of God, we started planting churches.

We bought two tents. It's like a little circus tent and we had one for about 10 years. Then we went and bought a second one. And we go out to the villages and and that's probably a youth night there. That's why we have the balloons. And we set these tents up for two weeks or for when we set a tent up to help a church that's already planted, we'll have it like for a week.

When we start to plant a church where there's no church, we leave it for 21 to 30 days every night. Evangelize, follow up, visit people. People come in the tent in the day after you've been there a week. People sometimes have thrown rocks at the tent. So it's not all like easy going.

And there's sometimes there's threats. We've been called in, you know, to the government offices, hey, what do you because they think we're politicians and they see that we have 500 people and they're like scared. Then we find out we're not politicians in competition with them. They're like, oh, okay.

You know, pray for us. So most of the persecution in the tent is because people think that we're like a another party or something that we want to, we want to take over. But there's more power coming out of Washington State in the Tri-Cities HungryGen Church than coming out of Washington DC.

Don't forget that. So, and I'll build my church. That's all the photos, isn't it, Roberto? Yeah, we did a little better in the first I was mixing up the photos and mixing up the testimony. So Jesus said He'll build his church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.

Real quick, I have time. The place He took him to verse 13. Caesarea Philippi, my son gave blessed us with a trip and him and his wife and daughter came. We went to Israel first time three years ago. Never thought too much about it. I always thought they'd say holy go to the Holy Land.

I said I'm in the Holy Land. And I'm here in the ghetto of Mexico City. I'm in the maximum security prison preaching. I'm in the Holy Land right here. I mean, I really said that to people that wanted to sell me tickets to go to Israel. But I loved it.

We went to Caesarea Philippi. Somebody told me, "You got to go. It's from the Galilean Sea, el mar de Galilea. It's three hours drive in a rental car. It would have been a two or three day walk for Jesus with His disciples. When you get up on that hill right now, it's in sort of a demilitarized zone between Syria, Lebanon, and Israel.

You have to go some checkpoints to get there. There's not a lot of tourist buses that go there or none. And you get there and there's a cave and a hole and that's where a lot of sacrifices were done. It's to the god of called pan which is all gods and it was a very heathen and pagan place even though it's beautiful with waterfalls and stuff.

Next to that I actually took a stone and dropped it in the mouth of that cave and I never heard it hit the bottom. It does have a bottom but people thought it didn't have a bottom. They called that area the gates of hell. That's they sacrificed animals, children.

They called it the gates of hell. Then right next to it from here to where the screen is, there's ruins. You can even see the tile floor with some of the color in it. And the ruins, it's a temple to Nemesis, the goddess of vengeance. Imagine. Then a little bit further down there's another one that it still has the niches carved out of the wall and it was a temple to Aphroditis, the goddess of like sex and free love.

And then if you go up on the hill, which we did, and walked up there with my granddaughter, there's another temple that the ruins are pretty well conserved, and it's to Nimrod, the god of destruction. And then there's a few other ruins that were temples to the Roman empires.

Jesus took His disciples to hell on earth in the first century. And then you're all worried about these ABCD ideologies and okay, Donald Trump and Isn't that Democrats and they this was I mean this was hell on earth. They're sacrificing people's lives throwing them into that cave and Jesus takes them there.

I'm sure as good young Jewish men. They're like, "Wow, why are we going to this pagan place?" Because he took them there and He said, "Who do you say I am?" And He took him there and He prophesied first time in the Bible. Ekklesia, the church, His church.

First time in the Bible. He says in that pagan demonic place, He says, "I will build My church and not the gates of Aphroditis or vengeance or depression or anxiety or witchcraft. Nothing will prevail. Nothing will win. My church will be here. When I studied in elementary school, we studied that the one country, a big country was the Soviet Union.

There was two Germany's when I went to school. You remember that? Two Germany's, one Korea. Whoa. Now there's two Korea's, one Germany. And the Soviet Union is about 14 countries, doesn't exist. Nations that seem so strong, politicians, athletes, stars in Hollywood, they seem like, whoa, they're gone. They crumble.

They fade. But the church of the Lord Jesus Christ will be here till the trumpet sounds. It'll be here when the trumpet sounds. I'm not saying some things because they'd come to me in Spanish. The the voice of the archangel and the trumpet, the church of Jesus Christ will be here.

But the church of the living God, family of God, like I experienced in prison, without racism, without discrimination, one body, one family. But still Christians sometimes read this verse and say, "Oh, that's good. The gates of hell won't prevail against us. We're here. You know, the devil's not going to come through those doors and get me cuz I'm in the church."

That's not it. It's exactly the opposite. It's the doors of hell where people are in depression, where people are confused, where people are addicted, where people have little or no hope, and they're behind those doors. And when we go as the church and we those doors will not keep us from rescuing the ones that are held captive behind those doors.

We plant churches. I went to I was recently saved. I was actually in the my mom's Baptist church and all the girls look pretty to me. Can I say this, Roberto? I'm in prison five years, man. All them girls in in church on Sunday morning looked good. I can do this here, right?

Vlad. This is like real. I'm not one of those guys that just makes things, you know, I mean, they look good. But, you know, I can also say from the time I got out of prison to the time six years later I married my wife, I didn't have sex with any girls before the Lord.

That's the grace of God. But, I mean, they look good. So, a girl comes up to me and I says, "Oh, yeah. You want to go out?" She says, "Oh, yeah. There's the movies playing. I knew before, I'm not that dumb. I mean, I knew you go to movies, you popcorn and stuff.

So, we go to a movie. It's a James Bond movie. And there were some girls out there that just had little bikinis on. I'm out of prison. I'm saved. I'm filled with the Holy Ghost. I walked out to where they sell popcorn. I said, "Man, I can't be watching this stuff.

This is the Holy Spirit. Don't grieve the Holy Spirit. You've been sealed until the day of God", probably today this seems old-fashioned what I'm this is what I did you know and love not the world I knew the verse and the girl comes out she why'd you leave me out in there, I said man this girl is not going to be my wife.

I know that she's mad at me, why'd you leave me in there alone, I said man I couldn't really watch that you know that bothered me and so we went I don't think I ever dated her again and I went back to my house and I said Lord I want to love the things you love and right away, that still small voice, Ephesians 5:25, it says, "Husbands, love your wives."

I wasn't married, so I knew it had nothing to do with the first part of the verse. Says, "Love your wives as Christ loved his church and gave himself for it." And since then, preparing and being in school and getting married, I know that I love the church.

And that's why we plant churches. It's the greatest way to make disciples. It's the greatest way to win souls. But we plant churches because Jesus loved His church and He bought his church with His blood. Acts 20:28. He bought his church. It's been your blood bought. You're of great value.

So, thank the Lord. As a result of that revival and some other moves of God, now we have about 80 church plants. We have two in Spain, one in Italy, one in Colombia, two in the United States, and the rest in Mexico. Some of them, some of our churches, five, six, seven, are the only church in that town.

The only Christian church. They're the good ones. They're the ones that get stones thrown at them when we're out there preaching. There's something about being the first Christian church in an area where you get death threats and stuff like that. But, you know, they're the ones that grow.

So that's my story. But this is the word of God. Who's Jesus? Who do you say He is? Let's stand up. Let's stand up. I guess the message of a testimony like mine is if God can use him, God can use me, too. My mom's still alive. She's 97.

She told me the other week, she said, "All I did, I was just praying day and night that you would quit using drugs and you'd be a normal person." She said, "I never dreamed you'd be traveling to the nations." So, moms be encouraged, dads be encouraged. Father, thank you.

Thank you Lord, for your word. Thank you for this church. Thank you Lord God for this message. Thank you Lord for giving me a large place here in HungryGen. Thank you Lord Jesus. As we're up if anybody listening there or if anybody is here and you if I ask you who Jesus is, you could not say, "Well, He's my savior, He's my Lord.

If you can't say that with assurity and you want and you desire a new life and you desire to be saved, the Son of God, Emmanuel, God with us in His humanity, He received the rejection. He was despised. He received not only the physical pain of death on a cross, death and death on a cross, but He received my sins.

You know how bad you feel when you've been in sin. How hopeless you feel. Jesus received all that. Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? He cried. If anybody wants to receive the free gift of God, recognize Jesus as Savior and as Lord, come right up front here.

We'll pray for you. One person come from another state. Maybe you've never been here before. First service we had three people never two people had never been in a Christian church in their entire life. They came up front, received Jesus from another state. I love it. I love it.

What's your name? Stephen. I'm Stevenson. So, we might be related somewhere. This is good. This is good. We'll come down and pray for you, Stephen, in just a minute. Is there anyone else? Stephen, stay up here because when I get rid of this microphone, Pastor Vlad's going to come up.

I'm going to come down and pray with you. Can we do that? and anyone else who you have known the Lord. You've been part maybe of a Christian church. You might have been hurt in a church. You might have been offended in a church. That's what I sense.

And you've been away from God. You want to come up here with Stephen, too? We want to pray for you. Come on up right now. Men or women, young or old. Sometimes church people can hurt us. Come on up, man. You're good there. Okay. My son can pray for you right there.

You don't have to come up. Although this is not a place of condemnation like what did these three do? This is a place of grace. This is a place of grace. You want prayer there, right? You don't have to come up. Okay? You don't have to come up.

My son can pray for you in a minute. So Lord, we thank you. I thank you, Lord, that you don't want any to perish, that you don't want any to be lost, but that all would come to know the truth, that all would come to know your love, Lord God.

So I bless these that have come and I bless any more that need to come. Come, come, come. What's your name? Veronica. Vero call you Vero. We need a lady. Pastor Vlad, I'm gonna I thank you for allowing me this time. I really want to come pray especially for Stephen and if there is anyone else if you're here today and you you have not given your life to Jesus before.

Maybe you're visiting us for the first time or you've been coming week in week out and today is that day of decision or maybe you walked away from Christ and you need to give your life to the Lord and the Holy Spirit is nudging on your heart. Just come out.

We're going to pray for you. The goal here isn't that you join our church. The goal is that you receive the gift of salvation, the gift of forgiveness. And you heard today from Robert, you know, his mom was praying for him and his life was changed after that.

And it's not only became a normal person, he's not normal at all, you know. So God is going to make you good, not normal, you know. And maybe somebody's praying for you to be normal, but the way God's going to answer that prayer is making you not normal at all, but good, not normal.

Amen. And so those of you here in the front and anybody watching us online, let's pray this prayer together. Say with me, Lord Jesus Christ, I believe You are the Son of God who died on the cross for all of my sins. I am so sorry. For everything I've done.

Would you wash me with your precious blood? Come and live in me. Fill me with the Holy Spirit. Holy Spirit, give me new life. And give me power to walk after you. In Jesus name. Amen.