The Embrace of God - Personal Testimony | Pastor Daniel Gouveia

i do want to share something today and before i do so i would like to just say it again like dr tree said it so well everybody is important and the family of god in the church so you are very important thank you for joining us for this live stream um service we had our first outdoor service at 8 30 a.m it was amazing beautiful for some people the weather was amazing for me because i'm very skinny it was a little bit chilly but i praise the lord praise the lord that we had a very very beautiful service outside with so many people who joined us now again i want to say that everybody is so important for god and i want to say this today especially because i believe that god has laid it on my heart to share my testimony now of course i'm not going to share everything that god has ever done for my for me and in my life maybe you will think i am but believe me it's not even 25 of the great things that god has done for me um i believe that when we're at church from the pulpit we should preach the word of god more often than not and i am going to share some bible passages some quotes also by the spirit of prophecy however i also believe there's a time when we should share the great things that god has done for us um psalm 66 verse 16 says come in here all you who fear god and i will declare what he has done for my soul please as i speak please pray so that not daniel gouveia may be exalted here today but that your thoughts and your hearts may be lifted up to jesus christ that he may be the one exalted i am telling you what he has done for me and that is the purpose to exalt jesus here today so let us pray father in heaven thank you so much for another day of life thank you that you are clearing the sky we can see the blue again we still are not really out of danger we pray that you may be with your children that have been affected by the fire by these great fires here in california and elsewhere thank you that some of our members were able to go back to their homes and we thank you for everything that you are doing for them i pray that we as a church may be united in prayer that we may do everything we can to help those in need father thank you that you are such an amazing god i pray that you may be glorified here today that the holy spirit may speak and that everybody listening to this message can know that he or she is a very special child of god and that god loves him or her and is willing to give everything to save him or her that's what we pray in the name of jesus amen i was born i was born in a small country in europe a country called portugal and i was born july the 4th [Music] 1979. now i had no idea that july the 4th was important in a country where i would eventually live i love portugal i have always loved my country i still do portugal is a small but very beautiful country with a rich culture and a great history and i was born to a seventh-day adventist couple now my parents had just been converted to christ and had just accepted the seventh-day adventist faith and they did their best to teach me their ways although i was not an easy child or teenager and when i was four i was tired of being home with my mom so i asked her mom please take me to kindergarten my dad was always working and i asked my parents i need to interact with other kids i was just four and my dad took me by the hand i can't i will ever i will forever remember that day i was going by the hand with my dad i got to the kindergarten and i immediately identified who was the most beautiful girl in the kindergarten class that i was in and i decided that i was going to marry her and i approached her to tell her my intentions and lo and behold the most beautiful boy in the kindergarten class appeared in front of me and told me i am going to marry her and i said no you're not i am going to marry her. and he said no you're not and he pushed me down the stairs and he said i am going to marry her and you are going to be the priest that is going to marry us that was a strange calling because actually today i enjoy weddings i performed the wedding last sunday i'm going to perform perform a wedding tomorrow and i will be performing a wedding october the 4th by god's grace i love it but at that point i did not know that my fate was set and in reality my dad had studied to be a catholic priest but he watched the movie when he was in the seminary to become a catholic priest my dad and my mom come from very catholic families and when he was studying to be a catholic priest he watched a movie called the sound of music maybe some of you know it and he fell in love with the actress and he said i have to get married i can't be a catholic priest and so we ran away from the seminary thanks god because i wouldn't be here if he didn't and um he uh he searched everywhere for truth until he found the seventh-day adventist church and he really resonated with him and he became a very committed seventh-day adventist now while i was growing up there was something in the living room that really was speaking to my mind and to my heart although i didn't understand all but i was fascinated by two sets of pictures it was a couple of pictures of my parents wedding in a catholic church and there was a second set of pictures or just a couple of pictures of their baptism in the seventh-day adventist church and i could see that my parents in the day of their wedding which i assume that should be a very happy day in their lives they had a very very sad face i actually still have those pictures i took them from my parents and i have them with my belongings in some boxes in their home but they don't know about it so um i saw the picture of my dad and my mom when they got married in the catholic church and they were sad actually my dad looked like he was mad and then i looked at the other pictures they were separated just by one or one or one year one year and a half so they were still young and blue beautiful they're still beautiful not young but they're still beautiful and the other set of pictures physically it was the same features but they were smiling in the day of their baptism there was a light coming out of their faces and i i i didn't understand everything but somehow weddings are wonderful but to me it seemed like baptisms were better and god had a purpose for me since i was a kid to the point that he delivered me supernaturally many times from death the pastor of our church uh actually when i was four actually told me he saw me when i was much older actually became colleagues for just a few years and he told me we all thought you were going to die when you were four you had scarlet fever my mom told me the doctors told her that i was so weak that i would probably not live but god wanted me to live my mom prayed like crazy and god wanted me to live that's all i can say when i was 10 i was playing with my friend i disobeyed my grandfather and i was play i went out to play with a friend he was much older than me we found some old grinding wheels and he said let's see who can throw this the farthest and he threw it and it left his his hand straight to my head and he hit me in the head when my mom saw me hours later i was covered in blood the skin of my forehead was dropping over my eye and if it had been half less than half an inch lower i would not only be blind but since it took several hours for my parents to drive until where i was and take me to the hospital i don't know if i would be here when i was 15 14 actually i was in a seventh-day adventist boarding school everything was wonderful was the the middle of the school year i had no reasons to be mad everybody was treating me very well but i got mad at some things it was just a little thing and i felt that i should go home and there the only class that was available for me in the public school in the town that my parents were living in was a class that was a sports class and in portugal since very early you already have a direction of where you're going with your studies so i went into a sports class and i had seven hours of sports every week and i was always very tired i was very pale and my mom started bugging me you have to go to the doctor and i said i don't want to go to the doctor i want you to do blood work no not at all i don't want blood work no needles and she persisted and the doctor had me me redo the blood work and then she called me and when she i went with my mother and when the doctor looked at me she was like i don't know how you can be standing the hemoglobin valleys in your blood are so low and i can't i can't understand how he can walk and god brought me from the boarding school that was a hundred miles away from my parents home to my house so he knew that my mom would bug me because he wanted me to live although my life was really not pleasing god at all i would hear a lot of rock music dress in black all my friends were out of church i would go to parties and bars and i would always always fall in love with the wrong girls at school and i would cry a lot i would cry myself to sleep because of these platonic loves and i can remember that i was i was around 16 years of age and i can remember very clearly very clearly that i was crying one day sitting in my bed in my room alone it was a very dark and cloudy day and i was crying my heart out and it was not for any girl and it was not just like you know a little bit depressed crying i was having convulsions i was having a panic attack because for the first time in my life it dawned on me the reality of death and i thought i couldn't believe in god at that time and i thought if god is not real i mean my parents believe him a lot but that's their god i i never i've never seen him i've never he never spoke to me probably the most certain thing is that there's no god you know the devil really gets you when you start listening to certain types of music watching watching certain types of movies i would watch really violent movies that's how i learned english so please forgive me if my english is not very good now you know why okay i learned with people saying words that you should not say from a pulpit so when that happens the devil really enters your mind and really changes things and i couldn't believe in god and i and i wanted to but i couldn't and i started having suicidal thoughts that day we were living at a big apartment in the fourth floor and i thought i just have to jump out of the window and it will be over because it's better to be deaf dead if life is if this life is all there is and you die after so much suffering why why why live i mean i i'm better dad so i started thinking i should go out of the window should throw myself out of the window started thinking about all the knives we had it at our place started thinking about slicing my throat and i couldn't get out of these thoughts and i couldn't believe in god and i just it wasn't really a prayer but in my heart i just was saying i would like to believe in you but i can't and my parents had given me a bible in contemporary portuguese i still have it and i it was by my side table and completely desperate i grabbed the bible like if i was saying to god if you're out there and if if if you are who people say you are this is your chance you know god did not have to hear a prayer like this i opened my bible and i just opened it like this there was there are several titles in bold nothing was underlined at that point i wouldn't read the bible much and i was crying so much i couldn't see anything i started singing the the tears out and trying trying to calm myself down and trying to read something and my eyes were like drawn like a magnet to these words and i'm gonna translate the words there's no english translation that actually uses the same words new living translation is close the words that i read in portuguese i'm going to translate them to english was were don't be afraid because i am with you don't be afflicted i was very afflicted he even used the translation that i needed don't be afflicted because i am your god i make you strong i help you i protect you with my victorious right hand in a matter of seconds i stopped crying all the hairs of my body went up i don't know if i was afraid or if i was happy i just knew that there was a god he was really there he knew what i was going through even though the world has billions of people and he wanted to tell me that he was not only the god of my parents he said i am your god i was blown away and i would like to tell you that that day my life changed and i became a choir boy going to church on saturday mornings well i did went to church on saturday mornings but i would go to clubs on saturday evenings my life was not changed overnight i know a lot of people tell their testimonies i found jesus i became a much better person i completely different it was not like that to me i'm sorry it wouldn't be a lie i continued doing what i was doing even worse things sometimes but there was a difference this was the difference every time i would get heartbroken by a bad relationship every time things would go bad in my life with my teachers or with my parents or with my sister every time i was heartbroken and really bad i had messed up again i knew he was there so i would come back running to god and i would cry and ask him to forgive me and whatever and i started feeling like a hypocrite and i started saying i can't do this i just i do everything wrong actually just looking at this bible brings memories to my mind many times i would ask him about things i knew i shouldn't be doing and i would still ask god if i should do them or not and sometimes literally god would talk to me through the bible like if he was just the words were just just jumping in my face just telling me stop and i would still do it and come back crying later but i'm here to tell you that god is merciful and god is patient really patient and i started for the first time after feeling so miserable and knowing that he was there and feeling like a hypocrite started reading my bible especially the gospels and i started taking notes and something was changing and i started reading a book big book that my parents had a really nice binding a book called the desire of ages you know i really liked movies so what i what i was reading i was imagining the desire of ages by ellen white as a movie and i thought there's some movies about jesus out there but nothing like this this is amazing i started reading that book one chapter a day i would take for one hour sometimes two with each chapter and i started crying i was 19 at the time i started confessing my sins to god the bible became something that i would go to every single day i started praying every single day for the first time in my life i had a desire a strange desire to become a pastor but not because of anything noble it was kind of a selfish reason i thought pastors are supposed to do this every day of the week they stay for hours that's all they do they probably just do that every week just reading and praying and then they come to church and preach on sabbath i didn't know better and i thought that's amazing i should but i was studying psychology i loved psychology and i thought i would never to be a pastor never in my life however the pastor of my church saw that some things changed in me and he invited me to preach at a prayer meeting and i was a little bit startled but actually the church had been praying for me for years and god hears prayer and the people enjoyed it so he invited me to preach on his sabbath morning and the people enjoyed it actually there were there was a an elderly pastor there who they really encouraged me and said you should be a pastor and and i said what get out of here i don't want to be a pastor and the the the old pastor actually asked me for my bible i said let me see your bible we start seeing this is a nice bible but you need a minister's bible i knew what he was saying but i said thank you so much sir goodbye i would never want to see you again and i you know i wanted to be a psychologist my dad got a tumor in his brain he had to come to the states for six months my mom was depressed my sister left the church everything in my world was crumbling down and i thought i was studying at a private college it was very expensive and i thought i can't do this i have to go work and help my parents they're going through a lot and i was as i was thinking that i was already interviewing for a job and i and in the back of my mind there was this this voice daniel there's a lot of people telling you that you should be a pastor shouldn't you at least pray about it and i started praying about it and i visited with a pastor who is the who was the secretarial who was this the ministerial secretary of the portuguese union at the time great friend of our family he would come to preach at our church many times because his parents were members of our church and i talked to him one day and he would listen to me smiling like if he knew things i didn't know and when i finished i told him i'm kind of confused i don't know what to do with my life and some people are saying that i should be a pastor but i i really don't know much about what it is or if i should even consider says oh daniel you know what your mom called me it's like oh really yeah she told me you're a little bit confused about your studies asked me to pray for you and actually i already talked to the president of the union and we're so happy because we believe that god is calling you to minister he's like what what what now as a yes we yeah why do you what do you mean how did you know that god was calling you to be a pastor say oh he became very serious well um i um i was a i don't want to brag but i was a very good soccer player he told me i was never a good soccer player this pastor told me i was a very good soccer player there was a lot of even national teams that wanted me to play for them we moved to south africa i continued playing soccer in south africa i was one of the best players in the team so of course the team wanted me to play in every game and i started playing on saturdays against my conscience i had a friend who was an atheist and one day i go by him and i stress my hands hey how is he how's it going and he did not want to greet me and i said what's the matter and he said well you know if you can betray your god who is so important for you i'm sure you probably can betray your friend so i can't be your friend i'm sorry i'm here to tell you today that there is a god in heaven that is so good and loves you so much that he can even talk to you through an atheist believe me he did it to that pastor so of course this broke his heart he went home that day he started crying knelt down by his bed he was telling me his story i was like listening knelt down by his bed open his bible in tears and he started reading and this is what he told me he opened his bible in front of me telling me this is what i read when i opened my bible daniel you whom i have taken from the ends of the earth and called from its farthest regions and said to you you are my servant i have chosen you and have not cast you away fear not for i am with you be not dismayed for i am your god i will strengthen you yes i will help you i wanted to talk i wanted to stop him but he was telling me his personal testimony ah yes i will help you i i will uphold you with my righteous right hand it's like several years ago god talked to me with that same verse and i started thinking wow this guy he's the ministerial and secretary executive secretary of the of the union when he speaks i just feel like god is speaking to me and he has this past and god used the same bible verse that he used to touch me maybe god is telling me something so i went away to my house he told me if you want to go we will sponsor you you just tell us by this date we you can go the union will pay for a great percentage of your studies just let us know i had to make up my mind i had to decide i couldn't decide i mean how could i with such a dark past and such a lousy human being that's how i thought about myself how could i ever be a pastor i was not worthy i was not good enough pastors i kind of kind of was kind of understanding and learning that they were also leading the church and not just speaking speaking is easy and i thought so one day it was at my parents kitchen they had a country house we were at the country house so my parents kitchen has had a beautiful view and i was just just crying i started fasting was without eating for the whole day praying i opened up my bible and asked god to talk to me but i was just reading these texts in isaiah with a lot of fights and wars and a lot of vengeance and i was like no god please please you need to help me and i opened my eyes and i saw it was such a beautiful day the country side by that house had such a beautiful scenery and i remembered that god is our father he loves us so i just talked to god as my father that second time and i just said father i i'm gonna be honest i feel the desire to go to france and study theology but i need to know if you approve of this if you are calling me if you will bless me now i know a lot of pastors mess up and i know that i will probably mess up but if i do in my studies or in ministry please help me to remember this moment so i will never blame you but i need you to tell me if you want me to go if you if you if you approve if you are blessing me in this and i opened my bible the second time and actually i read these words in the book of a guy and again the word of the lord my translation in portuguese said in the second time the word of the lord came to a guy on the 24th day of the month saying speak to zerubbabel governor of judah saying now i had no idea who zerubbabel was and i just started reading about wars again in conflict he said i will shake heaven and earth i will overthrow the throne of kingdoms i will destroy the strength of the gentile kingdoms i will overthrow the chariots and those who ride in them the horses and their riders shall come down everyone by the sword of his brother in that day says the lord of hosts i will take you zerubbabel my servant the son of shaltiel says the lord and i will make you like a signaturing for i have chosen you says the lord of hosts and you know i never tell people if you have a big decision just pray open your bible and god will speak to you i don't think that's the way you make big decisions in life however that day fasting and praying and asking god to speak to me a lot of different things were coming to my mind and this was what i needed to make a decision to serve the lord and i made my decision with god and my mom freaked out she was afraid she didn't want me to go to france when i was for two or three years in the boarding school when i was just a young kid she was mad at my dad she wasn't didn't want to be far away from me so when i when she heard that i was 1920 and i was going to go to france to study theology she talked to the pastor of our church and convinced him to talk to me so that he would talk me out of it so the pastor sit down in the same kitchen where i read the the that god had chosen me or i believed that and i the pastor sit down and start telling me no you can't go to france you should finish your studies become a psychologist be a respected doctor then if you want you can go to colognes and then people will respect you more because hey you're going to be a psychologist and i said pastor thank you but i really prayed for many days i fasted several times and i i was a little bit naive and so i shared my story with him he said oh a lot of people do that they just pray and they go with their finger they think god is talking to them like that but don't do this like well it's not really what i did but pastor look i made a pledge to god to go to friends and study theology and become a pastor and do my best i made this decision with god so whatever you tell me is not going to work he was mad he was furious then another pastor came and visited our church the pastor who was the pastor of my parents and i when i was born in caldena we were now living in another city and the pastor came to prison our church and my mom of course talked to them and said please talk my son out of going in to france and to study theology i don't want to lose him and the pastor taught called me after the sermon and said daniel do only what god tells you do only what god tells you period that's what he said i went to france first few weeks my french was terrible and the first few weeks i thought i was going to fail in every class and i brought back my notes to my room roommate and he looked at them and he said you wrote all of that in class i said what do you mean all of that he was speaking for two hours i have two sentences he said oh yeah when i when i started i had no sentence i couldn't understand one word so praise the lord so i made a decision that i would seek god first and i was pretty consistent i put my alarm clock was actually the phone you could dial a number number and you would set an alarm clock i would put the phone on the other side of the room and i would wake up every morning at 5 00 a.m i would wake up also some friends they were not happy about that 5 am i would wake up and i would search god i just prayed and studied my bible and god gave me the grace of being a good student i can say that maybe one of the best in my class to the point that the school wanted to hire me when i finished my theology studies they had a position for a bible teacher on campus and that was a great honor but of course i had made a pledge to the portuguese union and let me share something with you maybe some of you don't know this but i love my country so much that when i finished my theology studies in in france i had made a pledge in my heart to go back to my country preach in my country and die in my country or see jesus coming back in my country that's how much i love portugal i was already married and my wife was the same she loved portugal so much we both love portugal she was born in the states but she grew up in the in in portugal so that's how much we were in love with portugal oh god has a sense of humor anyways went back 2004 september 4 2004 was my starting date i was going to be presented to two churches that ministerial secretary was still ministerial secretary four years later he told me daniel we're so happy that you're coming and we have a church the pastor just left we have two churches as a district and we're not going to actually put you through an internship you're just going to go and start working there as a pastor yeah i was like wow that's amazing but my dad got a phone call he said hey as a friend long-time member of the seventh-day adventist church knew a lot about what was going on in the country and he said hey i hear your your son is a pastor now and my dad was like yeah he's a pastor and i hear they're going to put him in a church district no internship actually and said yeah that's my boy okay who did he hurt at the union level i was like what yeah did he annoy someone in the unions like not that i know of they're putting him in a war zone everybody knows those churches have d problems see what they did not tell me is that the pastor that was there he didn't leave because he wanted to he ran away to brazil because he couldn't stand those churches anymore anyways i started praying i went out to the field the thursday prior to the sabbath that i was going to be presented in the in those two churches and i i was i was sad that day was another gray day a lot of clouds in the sky and i i felt no good i had that something that week that i thought i shouldn't and i just felt how can i become a pastor this sabbath i'm going to be presented to my first two churches and i i messed up and for years i had a burden in my heart when i was 12 at that boarding school i was baptized the pastor told me that when he baptized me and and two or three other uh kids that the skies were opened that this the sun shine through the clouds it was a beautiful day beautiful ceremony i really didn't see it unfortunately the day of my baptism i was 12 the day of my baptism i was thinking about the fact that when i came out of the water my clothes stuck to my body and there was a girl watching that i was in love with and she would see that i'm so skinny so i start taking the clothes off of my body and fixing my hair right after my baptism when i went to change i felt the most miserable person in the world i felt i was being baptized and i'm no good i carried that burden for years that day that thursday before september 4th 2004 i went into the wild to the wilderness and i start praying and praying and asking god please please do something for me i need you i need to know that you will be with me i i'm hearing some strange things about these churches that i was not aware of i don't know what's going to happen please help me but it seemed like my prayers would not go above the clouds i had walked for a mile or two my car was far away and to my disgrace it started raining now a few drops became a waterfall i reached my car completely soaked i got into the car and i was feeling miserable i was wet it was cold and i felt that i was fasting and praying but god did not hear me you know satan loves to tell you that god doesn't hear your prayers but it's a lie it came out of the car and i knelt down right next to the car in the middle of the mud it was mud all over it's a big puddle of mud filling in with water rain i couldn't almost can open my eyes but i started praying just praying and saying please baptize me with your spirit please baptize me with your spirit and i knew the promise if you who are evil know how to give good gifts to your children how much more the heavenly father will give his holy spirit to those who ask him and as i said please baptize me with your spirit over and over then it's like god gave me faith to to trust the promise and i said i trust you and as i said i trust you i heard this huge loud the loudest ever in my life thunder like it exploded right behind my neck i was a little bit afraid to be honest i bow down with my face to the mud i'm a sinner god could destroy me like that the rain stopped the clouds in a matter of minutes these dark skies became blue i got into my car all wet i took the clothes off i was still all wet inside i started driving i turned the heating honest and i started singing i was happy i i had been baptized with water i for the first time in years that burden got out of my chest and god kind of showed me that he would give me his spirit for ministry i was singing i was so happy my face was like the face of my parents when they were baptized into jesus in the seventh-day adventist church and the sabbath came was presented to the two churches i preached one sabbath and one church the other sabbath in the other church and sure enough the reputation did not disappoint 15 days into my ministry i get a phone call of an elder way older than me i was 25 at the time he yelled at me and he yelled at me so much and so hard i had just preached one sermon at his church i actually preached the sermon that his father-in-law asked me to preach i asked so what do you guys need here in terms of sermons what are the needs of the church his father-in-law was also an elder he told me well we need reverence here he said okay so i'll preach about isaiah 6 and reverence and the importance of being reverent in the presence of god and i thought the whole family was happy because he they told me they were happy it was not about the sermon he was just a misunderstanding he hammered me down and he said i'm taking my membership away and the membership of my family and we can go to another church he didn't do it i visited with him and with the family all was peaceful after a few days during five years in those churches i suffered so much that when i was assigned to a new district one of the leaders of the church asked me pastor how can you be so patient with these people when we're bugging you all the time with this and that and sometimes we're mean to you how is it that you're smiling and happy it's like well i had much worse before so you guys are fine you know i praise god that he kind of baptized me also with some fire in my first district and showed me what ministry is and it involves a lot of suffering so god also blessed me the young realtor who showed us the house that we rented our first house when he moved back to portugal she became my first bible study and my first baptism i when i was when i was younger and was still studying theology that i was invited to play a leadership role in the evangelistic youth camp i came to the camp and i saw a friend who was older than me was 15 years older than me he was running he was the general director of the camp we would go to a different city every summer and we would do an evangelistic program with 120 youths and young people and i looked at him leading that group of 120 young people all the departments so organized he had to do such a great task and i looked up at him and i said whoa i would never in my life be able to do that i became a pastor in 2004 2008 i became the spiritual leader of that camp 2009 i became the general director i never thought i could do anything good 2006 i was invited to preach in one of the largest churches of the country and it was a uh youth week of prayer of course i was young back then 27 and i preached i was very nervous sweat all over i preached for an entire week church was great great attendance amazing church that church had a big reputation that was the church all the pastors were talking about it that the union would only assign a pastor to that church after the pastor had a flawless career his last five years the reward would be to be a pastor of that church and you had to be a good speaker well i was 27 there was they invited me just for a week of prayer and you know preaching for three members six sometimes 20 in my good days and my first two churches sometimes 40 50 but it depended it was really a different situation and then all of a sudden preaching to 300 340. it it gives you it makes an impact in you so when the week was over i drove home to my two small churches and i was trying to convince me daniel you're 27. in the best case scenario you would be a pastor to that church if you become really very good and in 30 years maybe maybe in six years i was appointed the pastor of that church i thought i was not good that i couldn't do anything good you know satan will always tell you that you are not good to do what god is calling you to do or he will tell you you're just too good to go through this but look at jesus my friend he was willing to come and to die for your sins and my sins he was god but he did not think he was too good to clean up your dirt in my dirt god loves you like he loves me he has a plan for you like he had a plan for me and he has a plan for me still i still think like the apostle paul wrote i know that in me nothing good dwells nothing that i'm sharing here today is for you to look at me i'm asking you trust in god god loves you he knows what is doing in your life he has a plan for you way above and beyond what you can imagine now you may be tempted to think that pastors don't go through doubts and unbelief and questionings you know there's a book by ellen white entitled steps to christ that book has a chapter and that chapter there's many chapters but has a chapter on doubt what to do with doubts and you would think that if you are giving your life to jesus if you are coming to jesus if you follow some steps to come to christ like repentance confession prayer all of that you would think that doubts come in the beginning of your experience as a christian but actually she puts that chapter in the end there's only 13 chapters in that book and this chapter is number 12. what to do with doubts and you know she says something interesting in that chapter this is page 105 god never asks us to believe without giving sufficient evidence upon which to base our faith his existence his character the truthfulness of his word are all established by testimony that appeals to our reason and this testimony is abundant yet god has never removed the possibility of doubt our faith must rest upon evidence not demonstration those who wish to doubt will have an opportunity while those who really desire to know the truth will find plenty of evidence on which to rest their faith you know i would like to say that as a pastor i never went through doubts but i did 2007 was still a pretty much a young pastor god had already shown me a lot of evidences of his love but i was and still am married to the most amazing woman god has blessed me tremendously even me i i did so many mistakes in my life but god has given me a precious soul she's not an angel because she's not in heaven yet but if there is an angel in on earth that's my wife and i couldn't understand why god would allow her to go through so much suffering in the beginning of our marriage my wife had a cancer she was the first person i ever anointed god revealed wonders to us she was healed until today she's cancer-free but she contracted another disease it's a chronic disease and i couldn't understand why would god allow this woman who was brave enough to marry such a messed up man who is brave enough to leave behind a very profitable career to go god knows where literally god knows where why would god allow her to go through so much suffering and i was mad constituency meeting came to the portuguese union april 2007 and i needed to be in that constituency meeting it was it was going to be held at the lisbon central seventh-day adventist church and i i didn't want to go i told my wife i don't want to go i want to stay here with you i know you're not feeling well but she said you have to go daniel it's your job i said but i don't want to go you're you're more important to me than my job i said go okay i went i was supposed to pick up an elder in our other church and i was really really feeling mad that day and depressed and sad and say why i start crying out loud and crying and talking to god in tears my wife says i'm very dramatic so now you know she's she's right and i started saying i'm having doubts i'm having doubts that you love me and that you're there i start doubting christianity i start doubting everything even though i had so many evidences in the past and i started saying you know if if my if the members of my churches tell me that they're having doubts i'm their pastor i can you know that's okay i can encourage them but how will i tell them to believe in you if i can't god is so patient so merciful he had shown me over and over you know i love to read my bible every day i try to focus in one passage and read several chapters and one passage that was coming to my mind over and over was the just shall live by faith the just shall live by faith you cannot see me you don't understand what i'm doing in your ministry you don't understand what i'm doing in your family you don't understand what i'm doing in your wife's life but you have to believe me faith is not seeing faith is not feeling you have to trust me i stopped my car i just went through a little dirt road so i could stop my car came out of the car looked up it was a beautiful beautiful day and i said okay lord i stopped here just to tell you that i'm gonna trust you and you know when you cry a lot it's very hard to stop and that desire to cry and to weep came to my chest again but i just directed it to god and i said jesus embrace me jesus embrace me and i couldn't see any arms coming out of heaven no thunder nothing but the voice was there the just shall live by faith will you trust me by faith i trust that you gave me a hug so i went into my car drove a few more miles picked up the elder the elder was not a very nice person he would not talk a lot to say hey how's it going good when we were together i would do the talking as you know i like to talk so i would talk a lot that day i drove 125 miles we did not say one word to another and i could care less i was not happy came to that church saw my dad my dad was a delegate to his church and he gave me a hug that felt felt good two months prior to that day i had been at a friend's house was also pastor our wives were talking in the kitchen he was talking with me in his office he was also young and he had been a literature evangelist before he became a pastor and he had two books exactly the same still with plastic covers in his shelf in one of these his shelves at the office so i looked at one of the books i took him out took it out and i started looking at it and i told him he was looking at his computer and i said hey look this book sounds interesting and he was at his computer say yeah and i said oh look you have two alike and he said yeah yeah and he didn't give me the book and i was like man this guy is mean two months later he sees me that day on at that church he called me daniel come here what sit by me today sure he puts the book in my lap the book's title is the embrace of god the chair of that meeting as well known pediatrician in the seventh-day adventist church in portugal started that meeting like this my dad just called me as you know he can't be here is over a hundred he was a long-time pastor in portugal but he told me to tell everybody here the following works i'm repeating what he said please let them know that i'm praying fervently fervently that the arms of fire of the holy spirit may embrace each and every person in that church you know friend i'm not better than you not by an inch the same god who embraced me wants to embrace you today you may feel your faith is weak you may feel you're not good enough but let these words sink in reviewing herald written by ellen white in and herald july 22nd 1884 paragraph eight the moment you surrender yourself holy to him in simple faith jesus accepts you and encircles you in his arms of love he holds you more firmly than you can grasp him you will always feel if you're truly converted you will always feel that in your humanity you are very weak but believe me god holds you more firmly than you can grasp him you are a sheep of jesus christ nobody can snatch you out of his hand because the father's hand and the hand of jesus are one so today trust that if god could love and save even daniel govaya god can love god does love and god does save you and you and you amen let us pray father thank you for embracing me even though you knew that my great sins would pierce the hands of your son i thank you lord i am not worthy of the least of all the blessings you have given me but i pray that today everyone hearing these words may trust that god so loved him or her that he gave his only begotten son so that if we believe in him we will not perish but have everlasting life in the name of jesus i pray amen [Music] you

Channel: Fresno Central Seventh-day Adventist Church

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Length: 61min 33sec (3693 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 20 2020