Samuel Carlston "Red" Berry Funeral

Well, good afternoon. I'm watching what's going on out here, and it looks like a family reunion. And it is, I hear in the background. My name is Brian Barslow. I'm one of the elders here at Sunnyside, and we want to welcome you.

And on behalf of the family, we want to welcome you with whole hearts. And we pray that as we spend this time, and paying our respects to our brother Samuel Carlston Redberry, that we'll do it well. And if this is your first time at Sunnyside, so this is a commercial plug, you're welcome to come back anytime and worship with us.

I know some of you have traveled more than 100 miles, maybe a little more than that, maybe 500 miles, I don't know. But thank you again for your presence. It honors Red and the family and our sister Paula.

Before I pray for us to begin this service, I'm going to ask the men in the group, young men and old men alike, Red had a favorite song, Brethren We Have Met to Worship. And there are music sheets on the pew to my left on the front, and we would like to ask you to come down in mass as a men's choir to sing this song when I finish praying.

Way to go, you firemen all alike. So when we do that, and we want to sing with gusto, and we want to sing with heart, and we want to give honor to the Lord, and I know you will. So if you would join me in prayer.

Father, it is a privilege to come into this place and spend time with friends, new and old, to hug on necks and recall our experiences with our brother Red. May this service be honoring to him, honoring to the family, may it be encouraging, may it be comforting, and may we come away today having been better for having brother Red in our lives.

And so thank you, Lord, that you have joined us today. And may your Holy Spirit minister in a sweet, full manner. We ask these things in Christ's name. Amen.

A Grandfather, a Father, and a Preacher's Legacy

All right, gentlemen. Good afternoon. My name is Jason Samuel Jones. I'm the third.

Born, possibly best-looking grandson of Samuel Carlston Redberry. They called him Red because when he got mad, he would turn real red. Right, Mom? I didn't have a dad. This was it. This is what I got.

And I'm so thankful that I got this because I grew up around kids that didn't have dads, or even an image that they could look at and say, okay, this is kind of how that's supposed to go. And then just geography and time, a young man who thought he knew everything about everything.

An old man who thought he knew everything about everything. And we spent like 20 years not talking. But I could always hear his voice in my head when I was about to make a bad decision, and I always knew what he expected from me, even when I was doing the exact opposite thing.

And I spent all that time running away from being like him, or being him, or just... And I guess now that I'm 43, I realize most fathers and sons have some dynamic like this. But a few years ago, I realized that I'm just like him.

My biological father is this tall. My mother is this tall. But my grandfather was the giant, and I look like him, and I treat people the way he treated them. In good ways, and sometimes in bad ways. He was my protector.

I call my grandfather dad. When I talk about him, I refer to him as dad. My sisters refer to him as dad. We grew up as very young children around him and my grandmother, and my aunts called him dad and mom, and my uncle Greg called him mom and dad, and my mom.

So we just thought that's what we were supposed to call him. So it's interesting in conversations, even in the family, when me and my sisters are talking about mom and dad, we have to clarify who we're talking about.

But dad's the only dad that I've ever called dad. And I guess about a week after he was gone, I woke up and that hit me like a freight train. All that time we wasted. All that pride that we, he and I, did not swallow.

And everything I'm about to say was really inspired by three or four conversations in the last few months of his life. When he collapsed in May, my aunt called to tell me, or I think she text me, and I didn't even think about it.

I called my cousin because I don't have the money for a last-minute plane ticket like most people don't these days. And I was lucky enough that my cousin did, and she put me on a plane and I came and spent five days making it right with my dad and letting him make it right with me.

So everything that I'm gonna say is based on those conversations and the final conversation that we had face-to-face when he asked me to do this today. He would be in a coma within a month and he would be gone in less than two months from that day.

I think that the time frame is even shorter than that. It just all happened so fast. The conversation we were having when he asked me to do this was around the sacrifice that my grandfather made when he answered what he described to me as an irresistible call to preach, to serve behind pulpits like this, for churches like this.

10 ,000 hours. About 50 years ago, some scientists got together and said it took 10 ,000 hours to become a master chess player. And athletes and musicians and other people have all kind of coalesced around 10 ,000 hours makes you an expert.

My conservative estimates put my grandfather just in pulpit time, over 10 ,000 hours, preaching, teaching, prayer meetings, Bible studies, Sunday morning, Sunday night, guest appearances, traveling across Montana to preach at some podunk church that nobody ever heard of and probably 16 people were there because somebody asked him to go.

10 ,000 hours and for every one of those hours there was dozens spent preparing. And I'm here to tell you what I saw when my dad prepared to preach the Word of God to you. I lived with him from 11, 12, and 13 or 10, 11, 12 I lived with my grandparents.

I'm so thankful for those three years because I learned so much and they were so foundational to what I would have to go through in the future. Homelessness as a teenager, things that you shouldn't have to go through as a kid I went through and the only reason I got through it, not the only reason, but a huge reason I got through is because my grandfather had three years to lay some foundation.

10 ,000 hours. When he closed his office door he was unavailable. I wasn't supposed to knock. Mom, you didn't bother him. He would come out when he was ready to come out. She would let him know lunch was ready and he would be out, he'd bless the meal, we would eat, everything was great and he's back to the to the grind.

That's what I call my job, it's the grind. And I never really knew what he did in there other than read one of the thousands of books he had, but one time or two times he would not quite close his door all the way and it would be cracked about that much.

An 11, 12 year old mind just couldn't leave it alone, he had to go check it out, what's going on in there. And to get to his study you had to walk through my grandma's study and grandma's study was also where I did my school lessons because I was homeschooled one of those years, mostly because I like to punch kids in the face.

I went in to get a book, complete lie, I went in to go see what he was doing, but under the guise of getting a book and I found this 6 foot 4, 350 pound beast of a giant man on his knees, face in his chair, praying for guidance so that when he delivered his next message it wouldn't go the wrong way.

At my heaviest I was 350 pounds and getting up off my knees was physically painful for me and I wonder how many sermons required that much preparation that he was on his knees, not on a carpeted floor, on that plastic piece you put under your chair so it doesn't tear up the rug.

Go home and get on your knees and stay there for a minute. He did that, he had to have done it regularly and he did it for us, you and all of you. His results weren't always top-notch, he made mistakes, he had a heavy hand, he was short-tempered and he told me that and he apologized to me for that in these final conversations multiple times, not just to me and for what he did with me but for my mother, for his youngest daughter Holly who are no longer with us and for his two living daughters and for his wife.

Dad and I both married up, had no business being with the woman that we caught. Too good for us in physical sense, attitude, heart, generosity, you name it, my wife is just perfect and sometimes I don't appreciate her the way I should, sometimes I take her for granted.

My grandfather and I talked about that and I'm able to stand up here in front of a bunch of strangers and talk about it because my grandfather said it was okay to learn from it, to do better. There were mornings as he was preparing for those 10 ,000 hours when mom was still in bed and the house was dark and quiet, it was in the wintertime and snow had settled on Montana the way it does and it's just quiet and you could hear this six foot four, 350 pound man in the living room crying out to God, literally crying.

I don't know what he was saying but he was crying and he was begging for something. I kind of forgot about that until he was gone and I woke up in the middle of the night, my wife was freaking out because I just sat up and was just crying.

I woke up in the middle of night with some of these memories of him preparing for us, the message that he was going to deliver and when I went to talk to him and spend time with him in those final days, he expressed to me all these regrets that we were just talking about and it made me realize that I needed all this time to hear this six foot four, 350 pound giant beast.

I wish I could think of a better word for him to look me in my eye and tell me he was wrong about some things and that he regretted waiting so long to say it. It set me free so to be a better father, to be a better husband, to be a better friend.

Clarence Stiefel is here today. Clarence, you and Greg have been with my grandfather in his orbit since before I was born and he wished he would have been a better friend to you and he told me that. Greg, he told me about the regrets he had and it's just when you live your whole life looking up to a guy and thinking he can't make mistakes, to find out he can, it's so relief.

I felt relief that my grandfather made mistakes because for a long time I didn't think he did and part of the problem in that whole scenario was that he had a problem recognizing his own mistakes like all of you do, like I definitely do, and I just, I know that there's a list of people that will come up here and talk next about the preacher and the theologian and the brainpower that went into those sermons and the technique.

He drove this pulpit like it was a Corvette, guys, like he just knew how to do what he did, but it wasn't, it wasn't without sacrifices that he made, that we made. The scrutiny that comes with being the family of a pastor is sometimes unbearable.

When you're 13 year old boy figuring out the whole world and you feel this immense pressure from people you don't even know because they know your grandpa, your dad, and I know my mother felt that because she talked to me about it, not a lot, but at times it came up.

When he answered that irresistible call, he answered it and he brought every one of us with him, not just his wife, not just his daughters, his grandchildren, his great-grandchildren. My son, in some distant ways, has been impacted by the ripple of being a preacher's kid, for better and just like everything else, for worse.

I'm always worried about what other people are thinking because when you're a preacher's kid there's an essence of that in everything you do, but it was a privilege because I got to sit in the front seat and watch him preach, and if I got squirmy in my seat he would call me out mid-sermon.

Jason Barry, if you're not a preacher's kid, that's the thing you're thankful for right now. Be thankful for that. It's scary. I finally, dad was trying to understand or help, it was weird because he's asking me, who's the kid in the situation, I'm 43, I still feel like I'm 8 when I'm sitting at his bed in the hospital, and he's asking me what he could have done differently or better as a father, or not even asking what he could have done better, but trying to understand where he went wrong, knowing as every father in here better know, we all make mistakes as dads, like huge ones sometimes.

And I just asked him, I was like, dad do you understand how hard it could be being your kiddo? And he paused and he looked at me like I had said something he hadn't really heard before, and it was quiet for a minute, and he said something to the effect, I guess I hadn't really thought about it that way, or it was so nice to feel like I had given my grandfather some piece of knowledge, even if it was like that big, because he had given me so much.

Dad was a complex guy. He set a standard that was very high, and sometimes he hurt himself trying to hold up to his own standard. Sometimes he had to get on his knees to try to get to that standard, and beg for help, and cry out in the darkness while me and my grandmother were sound asleep.

I'm sure you knew, mom. I'm sure you'd heard it before. If I heard it in the three years I was there, I mean, I'm not breaking news to you, but I only had five minutes. I think I've gone past that. I was waiting to go past it to address the fact that I was gonna go past it.

When I was told I had five minutes, I thought about 10 ,000 hours, and how dad got up here and gave the full measure every time, and I'm just not gonna leave anything unsaid. And if somebody's gonna burn a pot roast, mom, burn a pot roast, because dad would not stop because of a pot roast.

Woody, mom, did mom ever end a sermon for your pot roast? I was there on a couple times when he should have. He did not. I have all this stuff written down that I want to tell you, but really I'm gonna leave it with two things.

Bible verses. As kids in the church, I know that you kids that are here now, and me, the biggest kid here, I remember a lot of times in my childhood where I would hear the book of Ephesians, chapter 6, verses 1 through 3.

Greg knows what they are. I love it. Clarence knows what they are. I love it. Children, obey your parents, for this is right. Honor your father and your mother, which is the first commandment, with a promise, so that it may go well with you, and that you may enjoy long life on earth.

What I didn't hear enough of, and what I'm asking the adults in the room to focus more on in your daily life with your children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, neighbors, kids, whatever kids. Fathers, do not exasperate your children.

Instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord. As adults, I'm guilty of telling my son how to be, how to act, and only recently, after my trips here with my grandfather, have I really started to make a conscious effort.

When I fly off the handle at my son for something stupid that he did that I overreacted about, to stop in my tracks, and to ask his forgiveness, and to apologize, and to explain to him that I wasn't being short with him because of him.

I was being short with him because of something else that I have going on. Sometimes I wish my grandfather would have taken the time to do that for me. A lot of times he did. He just didn't do it in such a way that he was admitting all the real depth of what was going on, and I try to do that for my kid.

I try to tell him, hey, dad's upset about something that happened at work, or Krista didn't, or the mail didn't come. Just different things, right? But it all comes out on him, because he's there making mistakes.

Forgiveness is not something that I think we need to ask for, and that's where I'm gonna leave this. I had forgiven my dad a year and a half before I went to go see him. A series of events, my mother's death, not getting to say goodbye to her, or make peace with her.

I forgave him before he went to the hospital, and Aunt Lou Anne called and said, get down here, or do you want to come? Everything was up in the air, so I just went, and I rushed into it, and for like 30 seconds within the first 24 hours I was regretting it.

I was like, I bit off more than I can chew. I'm in Oklahoma, to me, the worst place on earth, no offense, and I've been back three times this year. I haven't been to Oklahoma three times in the last 20 years.

Three times this year. That's awesome, dad. The forgiveness that I'm talking about is radical forgiveness. I've started calling it. My dad didn't ask me for my forgiveness to get it. I gave it to him before he asked for it, and he gave me his forgiveness before I had asked him for it.

And I had a bunch of different verses kind of set aside about forgiveness, because there's a few in the Bible, a few verses about forgiveness in the Bible, Uncle Greg, look it up. The most important one to me is Romans 3 .23, as he hung on the cross.

Who am I to be mad at somebody for cutting me off in traffic? As he was hanging on the cross, he asked God to forgive them, because they just didn't know what they were doing. Those are pretty much his words.

I'll quote it, because I don't want to just give you hyperbole, but he said, sorry, that was not Romans 3 .23. Man, dad's mad at me for messing up verses. That's what I get for writing this entire eulogy on the back of recipes I stole from my aunt.

At the end, though, Jesus didn't say, if they get right with God, Father, forgive them. He didn't say, if they find a good church home, Father, forgive them. He didn't say any of that. He just said, forgive them, and they were literally killing him.

So if anybody in here right now is holding out some kind of animosity towards somebody that you were supposed to love, because God commands that we love one another, and I'm not just talking about people in your church or people at your job, I'm talking about your family.

Twenty years we wasted. Twenty years, and I probably needed him more in that 20 years than I needed him ever before. But pride, and not just my pride. My grandfather had pride, but we found what we were looking for by running away from each other when we turned around and looked at each other, and we sat down, and I got to run my fingers through his hair.

Forgiveness. Find your family members that you've decided you're not talking to anymore, or your co-workers, or whoever it is, because God commands you.

To forgive them. My comments will be brief. I had the privilege of being Red.

And Paula's, and still Paula's, elder. It's a little awkward when you're the elder to the elders, and at times I felt like they were being a little more generous than they needed to be, because I got taught how to elder.

Right, Paula? She would often say to me, well, that's your responsibility. You need to take care of that. Yes, sister, I did. Red and Paula joined our little band of folks here at Sunnyside October 21st in 2018, so it's been about five years, and they brought with them an obvious love of people, music, talents, lively fellowship, a passion, and they were, they were and are a joyful addition to our body.

And so Paula has this new thing that she has a cane now, and she is a member of the Caniacs Club. I'll let you work that out. But personally, Red became a very genuine friend and brother in Christ. He displayed a warm demeanor.

He loved a good joke and frequent conversation with anyone he spoke. He could easily walk you into a conversation. He became your friend. But most of all, he loved to talk about our Lord, and as a former pastor, he divided, he knew that he could handle the word rightly, and he loved his Savior, Jesus Christ, fully.

Red and I had a little ongoing banter regarding his poor parking skills. For some reason, he could not get that van between the white lines on Sunday mornings. I don't know, and I'd bring it to his attention.

I just felt that as his elder, I had the authority and privilege to do that. And he would, he'd look at me kind of oddly, and then he would, the next Sunday, if he did much better, he'd seek me out, and he'd say, better now?

And I'd smile at him. I'd say, yeah, for this Sunday. And he would chuckle and laugh. A little-known fact about Red was he wore driving gloves. I don't know if he thought he was a race car driver or a member of British royalty.

And he also had a consistent habit that any time we parted company, he would say, mind how you go. And I often would try to say that before he would, and if I beat him, he'd just chuckle about it. During the last couple of months of his life, when I visited him frequently in either the rehabs or the hospital, we had frequent conversations about going home.

Now, Red was referring to it in two ways. One, the going home to his home to be with Paula, but he also meant going home to be with his Lord. He was keenly aware that his days were numbered by the Lord and his were brief to come.

He was aware. But throughout this time, I watched him do something that was consistent with his character and his, as you say, Jason, 10 ,000 hours of training. There was not a caregiver that walked into his room that he didn't speak to about the gospel.

He wanted to know their personal relationship and where was their eternal destination. Made some of them uncomfortable. Others rejoiced that he asked, and then that conversation would become elongated.

He left me with a scripture during one of our visits. It's 1 Corinthians 16, verse 13 and 14. It says, Be on the alert. Stand firm in the faith. Act like men. Be strong. Let all that you do be done in love.

That was an affirming scripture from a man to a man about how we are to walk and lead and guide and be examples. And we have, some of us have failed miserably at that, and at times we are successful. So I will, as I suspect you will, miss and continue to miss our Brother Red, but I have been, I am better for having known him and having him be a friend and a brother in Christ.

And he would want me to say in closing, mind how you go.

Preachers, the Word of God, and the Cost of Ministry

Good afternoon. I'm Greg. Brother Red, as you refer to him, is my dad. That's my mom. Those are my sisters, my nephews, my nieces. This is going to be a little hard, just bear with me. I'm a qualified, certified preacher man, supposed to be able to stand up here and just do this right, right?

Well, I just want to say something about preachers. We're an odd bunch. Preachers are odd. Let me tell you why that is, and Pastor Mike, right? I think you'll agree with me on this, brother. We're couriers of the Word of God.

It's our job to deliver a message that is so heavy, so much bigger than what we are, that we oftentimes stand up against it and say, how in the world can I live this amazing gospel, this amazing truth?

Because remember, we're just finite creatures with real limitations. We have clay feet. Some of our feet are bigger than the others, but regardless, they are clay, and we break easily. I have Brother Red's Bible.

It was given to me on my 50th birthday, which was last year. Oh, excuse me, a slight miscalculation there. But I want to read you something, and you have to understand this. These are his words, not mine, although I thoroughly do agree with them.

These are his words, in that you have to understand that in his statements, there was a lot of wit. He is a witty character, and I'll just say this. Maybe you don't know him this way, or mom this way, or my sisters this way.

He was a prankster. They are pranksters, and living with them for the years that I lived with them was a mixed blessing of acceptance, and joy, and comfort, and complete terror, because you didn't know when they would jump out, scare you, and ladies and gentlemen, I don't mean to say this, freeze your undergarments in the refrigerator.

I mean, we lived life like normal people. This man of God was hilarious. Have you ever seen the movies The Pink Panther? Kato? He and I had that relationship, and I'll just say he won. I scared many years of my life, but anyway, I want to read you this little statement, and then I'm going to take the five minutes that I've been allotted, and just to read to you guys some of the things I've experienced with this man of God.

This was to me. Well, I'll try. Excuse me. Luann, come here a minute. She's going to read this part for me. So he thinks I am. To Greg White, my son in the faith and in the ministry, and the son my wife could not give me.

Read the rest. Okay. That was a jab. That was humor. Okay, go ahead. My gift to you on your 50th birthday, November 8th, 2006. Goodness, you're making me feel old. You once said you wanted this Bible.

I hope you still do, because it's yours now. Love, Paul Berry, 11406. This is my treasure. Thank you, sweetheart. But that little, that little jab, mom could not give me. You may not appreciate that, but I understood what he meant, and he always picked on his wife, and so I'm sure she understood what it meant.

So my first, I want to share about basically a couple of encounters with this huge man. My first encounter with Brother Red was at a place called the Solid Rock Jesus Center. I was not a Christian. I liked my way of life that was not pleasing to God, but these girls, and of course young men follow girls, right, invited me to come to this Solid Rock Jesus Center to tear down walls.

Okay, I'll tear down walls with you just to be with them. Well, this was back in the 1970s when the Jesus movement was happening. Have you all heard of that? Yes? Okay. So I'm in this Solid Rock Jesus Center, not speaking to anybody, just swinging a sledgehammer, and all of a sudden I saw this guy walk in with a red afro, stood six foot four, and I looked at him and I said, what is this?

He had his Jesus jeans on. They had patches all over them, Jesus is Lord, one way Jesus crosses. I said, what is this? I never got a chance to talk to him, but that was my first encounter. He made an impression.

Big guys love Jesus. My second encounter, God sent him to share the gospel with a couple who owned a kennel while having his dog trained. Again, I did not meet him, but I heard him speak of Jesus to the couple.

He invited them to his church, and of course I went with them and saw Luanne and Leanne, my sister Susie and Holly, all there. I was very uncomfortable because people came up to me and had the audacity to hug me.

They treated me with hugs and welcoming me there. I didn't know what to think of it, so I was very nervous, felt very uncomfortable that somebody would love me and care for me. My third encounter was I was playing my harmonica for the dogs as I took care of them, keeping down the kennels.

He heard me play and asked to meet with me. He was producing an album, a recording at that time, of Christian songs and asked if I could play my harmonica on some of the songs. There was a song, a particular song called Give It All to Jesus.

You ever hear that song? Leanne used to sing it. And writing back from recording in his old white Ford Jesus van, he shared the gospel with me, and I was miraculously transformed. At this time in my life, I was living in a storage closet at the kennel because of the vicious home life I had left so many years ago.

I believe I was 13 or 14, and I was just now turning 18. Eventually, events happened that took me to live in his home. He, Luanne, Leanne, Suzanne, and Holly, mostly I'll just say Susie and Holly, like I said earlier, loved to torment me and play pranks on me.

But through it all, I was deeply loved. It was family to them, and they to me. They took me in. I was so much into this family that Mom, when I would do wrong, had no problem chasing me with her broom.

When you go into Mom's house, and I was looking for it just a little while ago, you will see a small shelf with four eggs sitting in the nest representing Luanne, Leanne, Holly, and Susie. And then there's a fish line that hangs off the side, and on that fish line is an egg dangling.

The four eggs are the daughters, and I'm just that egg dangling. But family, nonetheless. I could tell you Brother Red lived a life like any other Christian man. As I stated, he had clay feet, and at times a very loud, intimidating voice and very intimidating presence.

He was not afraid to correct, to encourage. He made mistakes like you and I. He had regrets. He struggled with his own fleshly desires, many times victoriously, and at times he even failed. He, like the rest of us, depended upon the grace of God and looked forward of one day being set free from his own very carnal nature.

At times he expressed to me his hatred for his inconsistency in his walk with Jesus, but he knew without a doubt that nothing could ever separate him from the love of God. Amen? Some people loved him.

Some people put up with him, and some people even hated him because of his uncompromising stand on the Word of God. But he delivered it faithfully in love to all that would listen. I would remember one of my fondest memories in the evenings.

This was back in 1975. That was a long time ago, by the way. People would show up to speak of Jesus into the late hours. I would eventually have to go to sleep, and when I woke up in the morning, there would be many, many more people who came in the night, laying in chairs on the floors or anywhere they could find a place to lay their heads just so that they could hear from this preacher.

He was a man who extended much grace. He was a man of grace. Even though he was stern, he was a man of grace. This was evidence in the fact that he allowed his wife of 67 years to continue to pronounce his name incorrectly.

As you all know, his name is Carlston and not Crawlston. He had so many interests. He loved to ride his bike. Brother, the riding gloves? Yeah. And man, he decked out. Leather jacket, hat. He was a cruiser.

He loved to explore new coffees. It was always a new coffee. He wrote songs. He loved trout fishing, loved to teach, write commentaries, and had just about every new gadget that ever showed up on TV. You may know this about him, but he put together a traveling music group called the Berry Family Singers, which was somewhat, I was a member of that, which included Brother Clarence Stiefel, who for many, many faithfully, years faithfully served alongside Brother Red and Mom.

The Lord used Brother Red, even in Brother Clarence's life, to lead him to Jesus. I'll just say that we were a heavy Christian band and we're all very cool because we guys were matching white socks and the girls fixed their hair in the banana curls and matching plaid dresses.

He would take us to play at revivals and we, I'm sorry, and traveled by faith in his old white Ford van, plagued with a steering problem, that kept the driver fully exercised by trying to keep it between the two white lines.

He had no father, so he had to learn to be a father. He deeply, deeply loved his daughters and many, many, many times confided in me. You see, he encouraged me to go on and become a doctor in marriage and family counseling.

My idea of being a doctor is that I just get to stoop lower and wash feet in maybe a little more professional way. But he would call me and we would talk about some of his regrets and some of his struggles.

And God always had an answer for him and made him understand of his unconditional love for him. So as a man, he struggled with his own issues, but I never once ever hurt him, deny the Lord, or walk away from Jesus, or quit the ministry.

As a man of God, he experienced love, friendship, hurt, betrayal, encouragement, and disappointment from brothers and sisters in the Lord and from those of the world. He struggled financially on a pastor's salary, but God was his supply in all the years.

I knew him. He never quit because of those things. And he would tell me, Greg, you must depend upon the power of the Lord that comes from his daily portion of grace if you want to walk faithfully with Jesus while being a target.

He gave me my first opportunity to preach from the pulpit at his church. It was such a meaty, incredible sermon that lasted a total of five minutes. A congregational delight, right? But he stood up and he put his armor on me in front of the church.

I'll never forget it. He did a great job, didn't he? And later, privately, encouraged me to go to Bible college and learn more on how to handle the Word of God. So I did so for many years. I just want to share two more things and I'll be done.

One was Raidersburg, Montana. Do I hear groaning and moaning? We, like I said, we're a really hip traveling gospel band. And it didn't matter where we went, we would go and we would play for hundreds and hundreds of people at some revival events.

And then this one in Raidersburg. And Raidersburg was a ghost town out in the middle of Montana. And I mean, if you like westerns, it was like a western town. Gray weathered buildings with an old church that had a pump organ, brothers.

Out of tune, of course. And we drug our heavy equipment, praying God get us there with this band. It's showing up. We set up all our instruments, pianos and microphones, amplifiers, and me with my harmonica.

And we had a great turnout. The two residents that lived in Raidersburg who had hearing problems showed up. And as my nephew Jason just shared earlier, the time and preparation, it made no difference.