“Does God really burn people forever if they don’t get baptized?!” Jeremy’s teenage daughter Darby asked as she walked into the room. She showed him the TikTok video she’d stumbled upon.
The conversation set off a series of events that led Jeremy and his family, who’d left the church years before, to have an encounter with the gospel. In a real way, this encounter happened because of the generous financial support of people like you. Here’s what I mean.
Jeremy and his first wife Lynn weren’t raised with religion. They came into the church in their early twenties through an evangelistic series. Jeremy loved Bible prophecy and the doctrines, but not too long after his baptism, he quit attending church. He didn’t have a bad experience with people. But between Lynn passing away, his remarriage and the birth of his twins, and the stress of making ends meet, church felt exhausting and he didn’t miss it.
Now, though, as Darby asked big questions, he realized that he knew the answers but she didn’t. “Well, let’s go to church and find out,” he said.
After that conversation, Jeremy searched online for a pastor he used to listen to, David Asscherick. As he listened, YouTube queued up another series: the Light Bearers Live Sessions, a monthly study with David and two other pastors, Ty Gibson and Angelo Grasso.
Angelo shared how, though he’d been raised in church, he’d felt emotionally disconnected from the gospel.
In the next study, Jeremy listened as Angelo shared how, though he’d been raised in church, he’d felt emotionally disconnected from the gospel. He was ready to leave the church when he heard a sermon about the woman who anointed Jesus’ feet with perfume because of her near-impulsive love for him. Angelo thought, “God, I want to love You like that.” He described how he realized that Jesus is a person who had died for him and this was not just a religion.
Jeremy loved Bible prophecy and the three angels’ messages when he became a believer—the ideas—but, as he listened to Angelo, he couldn’t recall ever having an emotional connection to Jesus as a person in his years attending church. He wanted that. So after the study, Jeremy asked God to connect the gospel to his heart.
He realized that in all his years of coming in and out of the church, he’d never grasped the centrality of the gospel or the connection between every doctrine and Jesus.
The next day, while surfing YouTube, he found a sermon series Ty preached. As he listened, Jeremy felt like he was hearing the gospel in a whole new way. In his words, “God ripped out my heart, but then He recreated a new one in me.” He realized that in all his years of coming in and out of the church, he’d never grasped the centrality of the gospel or the connection between every doctrine and Jesus.
We’d like to ask you to pray for Jeremy and his family as they have begun to keep the Sabbath and attend church again. He feels like this time it’s different. He finds himself sharing with people almost involuntarily what he’s learned, telling his coworkers and friends, “You need to listen to this sermon! It tells you how to think about God.”
Jeremy was able to discover the gospel through the Live Sessions because they’ve already been paid for by people like you. If you’d like to help give more people like Jeremy the opportunity to encounter Jesus through our content, I’d like to invite you to partner with us financially.
Ty Gibson
Ty is a speaker/director of Light Bearers. A passionate communicator with a message that opens minds and moves hearts, Ty teaches on a variety of topics, emphasizing God’s unfailing love as the central theme of the Bible. Ty and his wife Sue have three adult children and two grandsons.
