Pastor Johnny Hunt Testimony

we were here the Sunday night in the old sanctuary that's when Johnny came forth and the Janice with him and he got saved that Sunday night best god Johnny and Janet came in and walked right up to the front the very first row in the church sit down nobody I don't know it one time was on that row but then - but when the invitation was given Johnny and Janet got up and gone Johnny hunt gave his heart life to Jesus and from that day forward he was sold out to Jesus 100% not just playing games but sold out after church Johnny demonstrated real quickly his desire to serve because he started cleaning everyone's windows scraping the ice scraping the snow off of the windows when we got together we always shared the Lord Jesus and we went back home was that night and we spent hours just talking about God and Jesus Christ and when he comes out came to our house that night we did go over a lot of Scripture but he had to get a hold of the word and self and starting he just got to reading the Bible every single day every night and we spent hours just talking about God and Jesus Christ and giving him encouragement it's what to do and the first thing he wanted to do was go visit some of his friends that were lost and he asked me to go with him I said I'll be glad to go with you boo me and Johnny went to visit this guy and he lived over there owned us all for central boulevard over there and we went into his home and Johnny told him he said look this man who says it's past Sunday night I got saved invited Jesus Christ in my heart life he's changed me he's chased me on the inside and he told the guy how he got saved he believed Jesus Christ died for his sins he rose again the third day to give him victory over sin death and the great and he encouraged this guy to come to Jesus and he didn't come right then but eventually he did come Jesus I was probably one of the first people that Johnny witnessed too after he got saved yeah I told him I was happy for him but that just wasn't wasn't for me right now there was times that I was a bit jealous of it of him and that but not enough to to humble myself to to accept Christ as my savior you know I've said for a long time that what I did that night was the single greatest decision I've ever made my life so a couple of things going to happen in this service and I know there's a lot watching my internet and I pray you'll stay in front of the screen because it could be the message that changes you forever one of two things you're gonna celebrate your own salvation or God's going to show you that maybe you've just been playing games at the foot of the cross I did the funeral service of Freddie gage just a couple of years ago at Sage my church in Houston Texas and the words Freddie shared that it rang true my whole ministry is this remind your people eternity is too long to be wrong there's just one area you've got to get it right in I must confess my heart is a little heavy this morning because I've met so many people and being a pastor I so cared deeply for the people I lead and the people I get to teach across this country or around the world but one thing that really concerns me is a lot of people will kind of throw a date at you but they don't have a life to support the date there's no change the things of God are not on the Berner nowhere near fact if you're a Christian and you've been a Christian a long time but in the context of your family and your closest friends that's never part of the conversation it's never to difference daddies gods made in daddy's life or my brother's life or my husband or wife's life how could Christ be everything to us and yet never be part of our conversation and of our life I believe Jesus Christ is in the life changing business God's change is never temporary it is always eternal when I begin to read the Bible you don't have to read long you read that there's a fisherman named Peter and what's so significant is Jesus changes his life there's a tax collector by the name of Matthew and Jesus changes his life there's a man that actually persecutes to church and feels that he's doing service to God and Jesus changes saul of tarsus life and you have to come to the conclusion after reading your Bible Jesus is in the life changing business in 2nd Corinthians chapter 5 and verse 17 the Bible says these words any man anthropocene in Christ is a new creation old things are passed away and behold all things become new the present tense verb it means that when you get saved God starts taking some things out of your life some of it go immediately and then God starts putting some things in it's really remarkable I'd only probably been the church three to five times in my whole life before that snowy Sunday night and the reason is church was not a big deal to me and I had no desire to be there however when Jesus changed my life I began to love what he loves in what he promotes and it was a supernatural change it was not I've got to learn to do these things the Bible says that it's actually the love of God that teaches you to love the things that God would have us to love and so I begin to love what I didn't care for and I begin to care less about things that had meant so much to me before I came to Jesus so basically I was raised in a home as you know mother and father divorced so neither one of them were in church none of my siblings of which are five none of them went to church and so we were basically in America but as a pagan family just doing our own thing and God was not part of our life you know that I got married at 18 janet was 17 17 days and when we got married it was not long after that that her grandmother Selma Allen became a big influence and begin to just really plead with us to go to church and so I'll be honest about Christmas Eve a lot of people come here I was one of those Christmas Eve people I'd go to Myrtle Grove Presbyterian with them on those nights but it still just meant very little to me and I had no relationship with God I'd never owned a Bible I was not one to pray I just felt I was a self-made individual and then a friend by the name of NW Pridgen begin to invite me to church and he would just persistently stay behind me so between my wife saying grandmother wants us to go and I think we need to go and mr. Pritchett asking us to go I finally made my mind up lived it 310 Davie Drive I could drive literally less than a block and be at a church called longleaf Baptist Church and that's where mr. Pridgen went so we decided to go you know I was thinking back through it a lady told me later that she remembered the first Sunday that Janet and I came to church and she said y'all were dressed up and I told my husband look back there at that fine young Christian couple visiting with us today what a little machine I was far from being what she perceived that I was later that lady would become the secretary in my office when I would become the pastor of that church many years later and so just because we appear to be something does not mean that we really are but I'll tell you what I really believe I believe when a person has been soundly converted to Jesus Christ I believe that God so affirms that work in your life it's an inside job the Bible says we're to work out this salvation that God has willed and worked within us but if there's nothing to work with it is apparent that God has never worked anything out of us but if he has worked something in us I'm just gonna tell you he's gonna get it out one way or another as his children he's gonna work with us and so we started going to church so here I am in church sitting with my wife no Bible just listening to messages and this was all new to me some of you heard the story that once I became a believer I would sit near the front with my new open Bible to the table of content because I didn't know any of the books of the Bible so I wanted to listen and read study and wanted to know the Bible because again God had put that desire in me I wasn't just being pounded upon to this what I needed to do this is part of the change that God brings in your life so I went to church just on Sunday morning I'd never been to a Bible study class I'd never been to a Sunday night service I'd never been to a revival service was not even sure what a revival service was but when I would go my wife would say well that's good we went there let's visit somewhere else where many of you know that I come out of a background of shyness and so the last thing I wanted to do is to go to another church and meet nor new people the next week so I said if we're gonna go we're gonna keep going back and we went and I'm going to use language today that was not language of my vocabulary back then but when I would go to church and the preacher would be faithful to preach the gospel and just for the record sake it's the reason I've tried to be a faithful gospel preacher I believe the only thing test the power to change your life it's the gospel of Jesus Christ let your baptism not membership here not putting an offering in when we pass the plate you need the gospel and so I really want to stay true to really really preach the gospel so if you ever say of Mount about me that all Johnny does is over and over again preaches the gospel thank you for every compliment you send my way I would like to die one day being known as a gospel preacher and so mr. Gibson would preach the gospel and littlez I know God was chipping away in my life and that's why there's such a big deal about you inviting family and friend is the reason you're inviting them is not just because of the environment of the church of the music but it's that the gospel can continue to chip away and begin to show them their need of Christ and so I would listen week in and week out but then something began to happen I would like to tell you that they were certain verses that he preached and they really got hold of me but I can't remember any of verses so I can't go back and say I heard him preach this text and God when he captured my heart because I didn't know any of those texts but what I knew is this when he would get near the end of this message and he would say this in a moment we're going to stand and give an invitation and just for the record sake I will give an invitation until I die and the reason I invite people to come is because one day somebody invited me and it changed me forever and so I'm grateful for an invitation a public invitation to respond to Jesus but he would say we want to invite you to come to Christ and I can't explain this because I was raised kind of rough and I thought I was a man's man and so I would begin to become emotional and I'd really not been emotion I already have it some of you heard me tell the story one of my friends Wayne Collins and Wendell Perdue they were both killed Oh Carolina at Carolina Beach when I was about 15 years old and these guys meant a great deal to me but I remember went to their funeral and I can't remember ever shedding a tear I was a really kind of hard-hearted I often thought back in life and thought how did I get so hard to to emotions and I think it had a lot to do in mind when I was a little boy and my dad would would wear me out and he would say something like this if you don't quit your crying boy I'm gonna give you something to cry about and somehow another I learned to just hold all of that inside held it in all those years and now I'm hearing the gospel I don't know how but I'm grateful but after all these years it's just so real [Applause] but I would get emotional I never started carrying a handkerchief until I started attending to Baptist Church and really it was a point of embarrassment and it came every week so when he would say we're gonna stand to see the tears would come inside reaching my bills back pocket take my handkerchief and while people were an attitude of prayer to wipe my tears I didn't want anyone to see them I was dealing with the pride of people seeing me actually acknowledge my need for Christ and then maybe you heard the story but it's apparent other people could see my emotion and you saw Alfred and Debbie Joyner Debbie was standing on one side of me and Janet was on the other side on one morning when I was rather emotional and she said would you like to go forward and get saved today and really I would have loved to have said yes but I was very shy and backward didn't know what that would be like and I pressed back and said no not today and then at the close of the service mr. Gibson said this there's a man here and God's dealing with him he needs to be saved pray that God bring him back and save him and someone says well there were a few hundred people there did you feel it was you I knew it was me and I want to say something in this room I believe that God's gonna speak to some of you and it'll be definite that God is speaking to you and you will either reject and push away Christ like you've done so many times and let me say this every time you push him away it gets easier to push him away the next time and I'm gonna make another rather bold statement push him away enough and you'll go to hell one day you spend eternity separated from him because you'll have rejected the Lord Jesus Christ somebody says pastor Johnny is there an unforgivable sin in the Bible there is the unforgivable sin it's the sin of rejecting Jesus Christ and not trusting him as personal Lord and Savior so God was dealing with and so when we got in the car that day my normal routine was to go to Holly Ridge drag strip and race my car but I didn't go that day and when I told Janet and we talked about this again and I said I'm not gonna go to race I've been thinking about what mr. Gibson said he was talking about me into service and she said she thought I was angry like the preacher was picking on me and like some of you gets some time so the bottom line is I said no no not not in that way but in a good way I really believe I'm doing he's referring to and then I begin to tell her Janet I've been thinking lately about Jesus if he's who they say he is he could change my life forever and she said I believe he couldn't then she went on to say honey I've never told you but Jesus changed my life and she said I've not been living like like I ought to then if you're gonna go back I'm going back and I'm gonna get right and then she went on to tell me the words that bless me my parents word he didn't want me to marry you because of that and my grandmother discouraged it and I thought what a friend we have and you're my in-laws but I understood what they were saying and I wouldn't want my daughter to marry a Johnny hunt before Christ but the bottom line is we decided we'd go back that night and the challenge was and maybe you've seen it in the news this week I flew to Raleigh Thursday to teach in the seminary and they had two inches of snow but over in Wilmington it snowed all week did you know that they had about five or six inches of snow John peacock was the chairman of the pulpit committee that called me to this church 31 years ago and John text me and said it's snowing over in Wilmington wonder who God is saving on the week of January the 7th they've got snow on the ground there this morning but it was very unusual for them to get snow but that night even though it had started to lightly snow please hear me I had such a deep need in my life for Jesus such an over well me sense of a need for forgiveness that it was going to take more than that to keep me home and so that night I went to church and I went to church for that express purpose I really went to church to surrender to Christ now I've had people speaking in a life said I you didn't have to go to church to get saved no you don't have to go to a funeral home to die but church ought to be a good place to go if you want to get saved it ought to be a place you can say I can go to church and I can hear the gospel and that's what we're to be noted for we ought to be noted for a place where you can be changed because see what really is going to matter I won't live another 45 years to tell this story it just doesn't happen but because of the decision I made 45 years ago 45 years from the day please hear me I will still be alive in heaven and not because of what I did our memory verse for our discipleship group today was for by grace are you saved through faith that not of yourself it's a gift of God not of works lest any man should boast so it's not something that I did to get saved it's not that I got better the song says come just like you are just as I am without one plea but that by blood was shed for me o Lamb of God I come so all I can do is come just like I was as a sinner and ask God to take me as a sinner and forgive me and cleanse me and that's really what the cross is all about so that night we went back to church and it is true instead of sitting somewhere near to back we knew who I was going to respond and since so much - I I didn't want to have to walk out in front of a lot of people so we got down near the front somebody even came in and asked me to move over and I said no you come on over me because I didn't want to climb over anybody and so that night were sitting there and because of my shyness now remember the reason I'd quit school at 16 is I was afraid to give a book reports I didn't want to stand up in front of people and then it was kind of horrifying to think that I was going to publicly respond in that church and so as we got near the invitation and I got fearful I had the second conversation my wife but let me tell you the first conversation on our way to church that night I said I've got one fear what if tonight I give my life to Jesus and he doesn't change me I said Janet if he doesn't change me I want you to promise me that you're not gonna nag me about going to the Redd Foxx saloon and continuing to gamble and talk the way I talk and what I was saying is I realized that I couldn't change my life and if God didn't step in in a passive way and changed me I was going to go home the same person I came and I just remember her assurance of saying I really believe if you mean it with all your heart Jesus will change your life so here we are in service now the service is winding down the pastor has been preaching and he's about to give the altar call for people to respond to give their life to Jesus so I got nervous and thought I can't do this so I looked over and I said I need you to do me a favor when the invitation is given I want you to go forward and tell mr. Gibson I want to get saved and I can remember because I've told it so many times before of Janet saying honey I'll do anything for you but I can't get saved for you and by the way I'm a minister and have been now for the last 41 years but did you know that Deanna can't go to heaven because Johnny is a pastor or because I was the president of 16 million people for two years in a convention or anything else that we do the only way Deanna could go to heaven and I looked at her baptismal picture yesterday a baptized 30 year before I came here and she was 11 years old she had to individually repent of her sins and place her faith in Christ sometimes somebody asked you if you're Christian and you'll say my daddy was a deacon well let me say something to you god bless your dad but your daddy's deaconship will do you no good in eternity nothing will apart from a relationship with Jesus Christ Jesus himself said except you repent which means you see your sins and you're sorry for your sins you shall all likewise perish he said he's come back we might have life and he's speaking of a word Zoey it's a word that means life as he has life his quality of life did you know that Jesus Christ not only wants you to have his quality of life he wants you to have his quantity of life he wants you to live a full life but he wants it to be a life forever a life that you share with him for eternity and so when she finally said no I can't do this for you I led the way I went really by myself that night and I went forward and best I remember other than what i'ma share with you in just a moment I was the only person that night to respond and I do remember what I said and the reason I remembered is I've talked about it endlessly for the last 45 years I said Mr Gibson I'm coming to give my heart and my life to Jesus Christ and I want to be honest with you I've thought back on that before I didn't really know what it meant to give him my life I didn't know that he wanted to take my life and use it in the way he's chosen to use it but I really meant it and then mr. Gibson asked me questions I've thought about this so many times before he said so let me ask you something Johnny he didn't know me he said so do you believe that Jesus Christ died on the cross and so even though I didn't have a Bible or anything I'd heard that story and I just had no trouble at all with believing in history so encourages and validates the whole story of the cross and I just said yet mr. Gibson I believe that and he said so do you believe he died for you and I said I really believe that he did and said you believe that God raised him from the dead on the third day and I said yes and so let me understand this right so you're coming to put your faith in the death burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ I said I am and then he asked me a question he said so having done that this morning do you believe that Christ has saved you and I said yes sir I do and I want to say something to you forty-five years have passed and I want to say this to you clear he saved me that night he really really saved me and and before where I didn't think care about the things of God Alfred's right I went to his house that night and we couldn't quit talking about the Lord my wife went and bought me a Bible the next morning and even again this morning the first thirty minutes of my day nothing to do with this sermon was spent and still reading that book 45 years later there's this hunger the Bible says as newborn babes we desire the sincere milk of the word God literally is one of the birth marks of a new believer he puts a hunger and thirst in you to read his word and his word becomes the substance by which you grow as a Christian so I'm still really a growing Christian but that night Jesus changed my life in one of the ways I knew he saved me - and I didn't know it then is I wanted to see everybody get saved I went home I worked for these Jewish men at a place called Jacobi hardware and I didn't really know what a Jew was because I didn't know the Old Testament story so I didn't know about Abraham and Isaac and Jacob I just didn't know those stories I had heard people use Jew improperly they would say if you're not careful that person will do you and they say to me you work for those Jews and I thought I thought what they meant is we elevated our prices and so when I went to mr. Gibson and I said to him or to mr. Solomon his name's Abraham Solomon now that ought to give you a hint but I didn't remember though I didn't know the Bible so I said mr. Solomon I got saved last night to which he responded well thank you Johnny but I'm a Jew too which I thought it doesn't matter what you've done God will save you mr. Solomon nobody really did I mean I was just so ignorant to it that he had that he had really changed my life and by the way I worked for him for a couple more years before I sentence God calling me to preach and I'll never forget when I went to mr. Solomon and I said mr. Solomon I'm going to be resigning Jacoby hard where I'm going off to college God's called me to preach and here's what that Jewish man said to me son I never thought I'd lose you here at the company but if I knew if I lost you it was going to be to God and and then he said this he said but uh I'm gonna be pulling for you cuz you're gonna need all the help you can get nurse and why is that and he said well you're gonna be selling something that's very hard to sell I said the only difference though mr. Solomon is what I'm selling has already been purchased and paid for and it's ours for the taking and so I made my mind up this morning I wanted to be brief and to the point there's been the making of a testimony for 45 years I'm not where I was when God saved me God's grown me in a lot of different ways but still the bottom line is that was the starting place and I wanted to leave enough time so that everybody that watched me and everybody heard in this room would be able to do this this morning to go back in your mind's eye and in your own heart don't you don't have to convince me I want you to be convinced yourself that there was a day and a time that you turn from your sins and you put your faith in Jesus Christ and you became a Christian he changed you know you're willing to bet your eternity you're so Heaven Hell lost found you know that Christ saved you have you got it have you got that time in your life and you can rejoice and that's what you you do if someone said if you were to stand before God right now and he would to say why should I let you into my kingdom what would you say I would have to say Lord and and I'm not just a stickler on the date because people know a date that don't really have the life to support what they claim happened that day but basically what I want to be able to say is Lord I'll never forget January the 7th the snowy Sunday night in the close of that Sunday evening service the best I know how no pretense I cried out to God and asked him to forgive me my sins and I do not believe that God has made salvation amazed where you don't know how to get in and don't know if you're really endure not he even said these words in first John 5:13 talking about the Bible these things have a written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God that you may know that you have eternal life and that no there is a word that speaks of an experiential knowledge I know that I'm saved because I had an experience with God just as much as I wear a wedding band that I placed on my left hand my ring finger on November the 21st 1970 I was there I made a commitment to Janet Janet made a commitment to me it was sealed by Justice of peace neither one of us were in church and we we became husband and wife and have been for 47 years just as much as I know that I'm married to Janet the Bible says in Romans 7 for that when you trust Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior listen to this what the Bible says you are married to another I am confident of two weddings that have taken place the day I married Janet and today I became the bride of Christ and Jesus Christ became the husband man and he saved me I want you to know that you're saved I would hate to know that a good number of the people that I pastored invested in for years never ever got it settled and died and went to hell because their pride I demand this week asked me said what do you think do you believe I'm saved and here's what I said to him I cannot make that ultimate decision and if I made that decision that doesn't mean you're saved and if I tell you you're not it doesn't mean that you're not you need to ask God and you need get it settled with God alone as to whether you know him but I said I'll tell you this you will never enjoy a Salvation you're not sure you possess so you need to really settle and I said nothing needs to be more important than you coming to settle that in your own heart so I came in sir that and I'm not gonna make the judgement to say you are you're not I know this I know some people that claim they're saved I would say this I wouldn't want to think I was going to heaven if I'd seen no more change in my life that I've observed in their life so I want my life to to really radiate the difference that Jesus Christ has made in my life I want my wife my children and my grandchildren know that when I pass they ain't got to say well we hope granddaddy or I hope her husband was saved no they would know that my life had given reason to believe that I'd had an encounter with Almighty God and they had really saved me now I've got good news for you if you've never been saved this is good news you can be saved now you can be saved now the Bible says today is the day of salvation listen to it because it happened in my life today if you hear his voice harden not your hearts so if you hear it and I heard it that day and instead of going to dragstrip I'm going back I'm the person somebody said oh when mr. Gibson said there's a man here that needs to be saved you feel like God had your number now listen to me ladies and gentlemen God does not have your number God knows your name God knows your name he knows your beginning he knows your ends and it is numbered the Bible teaches so here's what I want to encourage you to do today if you've never been saved there is so much time left I'm cutting the message 10 minutes short in order to put the appeal on coming to Jesus so you may be in this category you don't know that if you died today you'd go to heaven wouldn't you like to know when you like to settle wouldn't you like to make your decision occasionally somebody says to me well I know I'm a Christian I said when'd you become a Christian said I've been a Christian my whole life impossible and then they said this my parents dedicated me the Lord good your parents made a good decision when did you make one so you might have a parent that made a commitment but that won't get you to heaven you have to make a commitment we must individually receive Jesus Christ as our personal Lord and Savior oh I was baptized baptism is an outward sign of an inward change but if there were no infant inward change you went into the poo a dry Center and you came out of the pool a wet Center it's got to be Jesus Christ in Jesus Christ alone that can change your life so here's what you hear in this basket er say the only hope of a person spending eternity in heaven is a relationship with Jesus Christ and I want others of you to firmly come to that commitment for Jesus so here's what I'm going to ask you to do if you will acknowledge in your heart that Jesus Christ is Lord but he died on the cross for your sins and acknowledged that you're a sinner and then the Bible says believe on the Lord Jesus Christ you put your trust in him you put your faith in Him you bear your weight on him and you believe that you're going to heaven only because of him and then you surrender your life to him you call on him it's a great promise in Romans 10:13 whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved he delivers us rescues us from our sin I want to encourage you to do that you can do it right where you sit I'm going to pray and it's what we Christians call a sinner's prayer nothing magical about a prayer prayers talking to God as I pray I'm going to encourage you that if this is the attitude of your heart make this your prayer change it to your own words but whatever you do cry out to God and to come into your life and forgive you and to save you to save you because you're a sinner now because your marriage is messed up no because you've lost the job that may be getting your attention but the reason you call them Jesus you're a sinner you're lost for that God you're on your way to hell the only way to heaven and forgiveness is through Jesus Christ and we come to him jesus said I'm the way the truth and the life nobody can come to see my father but by me so it takes relationship and it in it's the exclusivity of Jesus Christ alone he's the only one that can forgive your sins and save you could I encourage you to put your faith in Him so let's bow together in prayer and right where you sit if you've never been saved make this prayer your prayer right now just say to him dear Lord Jesus I need you just telling you I know that I cannot save myself but I know that you can save me in Jesus name come into my life forgive me of my sin and save me those of you in front of your computer print right now right there in your living room in your office pray it on the plane pray it ask him to come into your life to make you a new creation that you would know you belong to him that it would be apparent to you and to everyone else that will come to know you but Jesus Christ has made a difference in your life and just ask him now lord save me forgive me of my sins and then make this plea to him Lord thank you today for hearing my prayer and for saving me now help me to never be ashamed of committing my life to you if you have any questions or want to know more having a closer relationship with Jesus please contact us at wwf/e Sea Org or call us at seven seven oh nine two six four four two eight

Channel: First Baptist Woodstock

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Length: 38min 31sec (2311 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 30 2018