Hello and welcome to one on one. We thank you so much for allowing us to be in your homes. Wherever you're viewing us from, let me name Veronica McLaughlin, appreciate your time. We appreciate you carving out time, which is so precious.
You know, we're so pushed for everything Veronica. And the carve that time out is such a blessing. And we want to bring the good news each and every week, wherever you're hearing this from, we're just thankful for you, we're thankful for the many years that you've supported us. We don't take the opportunity to say that very often, but you know, we're in our 21st year of this.
Veronica was only 10 years old when we started. And we have enjoyed each and every season with you. You got it. I was in ministry at 10 years old.
I was saying, I cut a gospel album at 12 years old. So yes, that is very, that could be very true. We were all convinced that you said. I just want to make that clear.
I just, you know, I don't, you know, after the program, I want to have to repent. But yes, I've been in ministry a lot. I mean, I was a kid in ministry. I loved it.
It's just I did an album, many of you have it. And you've, they do. They do. It was called Jesus is all the world to me.
And if you don't, we have the other hundred copies. We do in our garage. And my girls love to take it out, listen to it. And yeah.
It's nothing like the richness of vinyl. It is. And you know, the little static that goes around. So yeah, I have loved the Lord all of my life.
All of my life. I remember, you know, talking about love. This is a season of love. And at three years old.
Why have seasons of love? I don't have a season. This is a big season of love. This is the big, big season.
And I better have some chocolate so I can get home. But just talking about that, remembering, you know, my love for the Lord at such an early age, my grandparents and parents and still that into me, I stayed a lot with my grandparents. I just love being in their home. My grandmother was a really wonderful cook.
Not saying anything about my mother, but my mom was a school teacher and cooking was not really on the top of her list. And I remember the prayers of my grandmother. She had a certain place in the house in the back bedroom that she would love to kneel down and she would pray. My grandmother was a prayer intercessor.
She loved to get into the presence of God. She spent a lot of time alone because my grandfather was a pastor and evangelist and he would travel. And when I got old enough, I traveled with him. But I remember being in that home filled with love and filled with the love of God.
And she would talk to me like an adult when I was very early. Talk to me and explain to me about the power of the blood of Jesus, about the power of the Holy Spirit, how important it is to be filled with the power of the Holy Spirit. I remember her praying in her prayer language. And it was just powerful.
And I remember also as a young child kneeling down beside of her and being filled with the power of the Holy Spirit, laying out in the Spirit and the Lord visiting me, giving me dreams. I've always dreamed from a very early age what the Lord was telling me things or showing me things. I still hold on to dreams that God is giving me and to know what's getting ready to happen and we hold on to that. So talking about that, loving the Lord so deeply at a very early age and we've instilled that into our girls as well.
And buddy, I know that you had a love of the Lord from an early age. There was a bit of a detour in your life that became part of your testimony that really launched this ministry. Yes. Well, you know, and I've always told you I can never repay him.
I can never repay him for what he did for me. And it's really the true essence of love. When you think about our Christian love, you know, he loved us. But we were still sinners.
He loved me. And what you just referred to is exactly that. I was in the world, embracing the world with a zeal like no one would know. And I finally realized and felt and discovered that he loved me, although I was a sinner, before I was even straightened up, before I was even on that road, before I even had considered it.
He loved me that much. That he gave his son all those years ago to die on that cross for my sins so that I could know love. So I could know truly, truly how to love. You know, we've met people in our walk.
We've met people in our lives that, you know, we just kind of turned us off. And then over time, we saw the love of Jesus, how God had worked his magic and their lives, had transformed them the way he transformed me, had done these beautiful things and the way they exemplified being a Christian changed the way I felt about them. And I wound up loving them with that same love and shame on me that I was judgmental from the beginning. I have no right to be judgmental because God loved me enough that he forgave me.
That he forgave me. The only way I could ever know the love of Jesus was to be forgiven. You know, and we need to, as Christians, never lose hold or focus of that. If we're truly, richly going to love people the way that Christ loves us, we've got to have that forgiveness in our heart.
We can't hold those things that would keep us from the love of God in our lives. We don't need to hold on to those things. They're an anchor that will drag us down, that will keep us from the fullness of God, that will, that we have to look back and ask forgiveness. And I have done that in those situations when I've realized that, you know, I've had a total change in my view of someone.
You know, I've got to ask God to forgive me because I've done something that I should have done. I've been judgmental. I hadn't come to know them to give them the opportunity like Christ gave me. He gave me the opportunity even when I was a sinner, when I wasn't even a Christian, he loved me that much.
And I've got to share that love and show that love and share it with you today. And hopefully during this season when we're all doing the beautiful things for the people that we love and we're enjoying, you know, the time of the cupids and everything. And it's wonderful. And it's a great time to share.
And, you know, for a lot of guys, it's a burden. Man, it scares you to death. Valentine's Day coming up. Holy cow, what do you do?
Well, we just love. I mean, it's just that simple. I think it doesn't matter how big the gift or what you do or if you do it with love, if you do it in love, it'll be received that way. I can assure you, you know, there's such a beautiful example in Matthew, Veronica of Christ and how he was showing us, teaching us that this is the road we need to be on.
And it's all about love. And it's all about love now for us as a people that we love each other. We have differences. We know that.
But the enemy would want to take those differences to divide us and then conquer us. But we're not going to allow that to happen. We are going to move and operate in love as the love that Jesus always gives us the example of. Now, in this story, there was initially what I love about it.
There were friends who loved a man who couldn't walk. He was a paralytic. They had seen him basically on this bed for years. And they heard about a man, Jesus, who could heal, who could deliver and what we realized as well could forgive sins.
So this man had four friends who loved him enough to get him to Jesus. And that's what we're doing with you today. We love you and we want to bring you to Jesus, give you that hope and let you know in him is so much love, unconditional love, no matter what we look like, no matter our nationality, no matter our gender, he loves us the same. And in the story, we're picking it up in Matthew, beginning in chapter 9.
So Jesus got into the boat and crossed over and came to his own city. There behold, they brought him a paralytic man lying on a bed and Jesus saw their faith. There's that faith. Jesus loves to see that faith in him.
And he said to the paralytic man, son, be a good cheer. Your sins are forgiven you. You know, you would think that Jesus would have automatically seen what state he was in and he couldn't walk. He couldn't move.
He didn't say you are healed. He said your sins are forgiven you. And then at once some of the scribes said with them themselves, this man is blasphemous. And his knowing their thoughts said, so why do you think evil in your hearts?
For which is easier you to say your sins are forgiven you or to say arise and walk? He was posing that question to them, what's easier? That you may know the son of man has power on earth to forgive sins. Then he said to the paralytic, arise, arise, take up your bed and go into the house.
And he arose and departed into his house. And when the multitude saw it, they marveled and they glorified God who had given much power to me. And there's so much wrapped up into this story. It's just a tremendous story of love, forgiveness, healing and glorifying God.
Buddy, that's the best story ever is, ever was and ever will be that we can take this even for our lives today that when we can get to Jesus that he saves us and he heals us. And in Psalms 103, the Bible tells us that we have benefits with being God's child. We have benefits that we are forgiven of our sins. I mean, that's the greatest miracle of all.
And then the second benefit is that we are healed in our physical bodies, in our mental state, in our spiritual bodies. And we have all experienced that through our lives. Thank God that he has forgiven us of our sins and that his grace covers us every day. That also praise God that we, because we are his children, have the benefits.
We have both experienced physical manifestations of his power and healing. Why to glorify God? You've heard our testimony of me being healed of a brain tumor. You've heard Buddy's testimony of his salvation, which restored our marriage.
Also the healing of thyroid cancer. We are here before you today, not just telling you fables and stories. We're telling you something that has hit from the very depths of our heart. The love that Jesus gave us heals us from the inside out, cleanses us from our sins.
And Buddy, what love? You know, I know that you love me and I love you, but there's no greater love than God sending his son Jesus Christ to die for us to cleanse our sins. What love, if you're there today saying nobody loves me, well you are wrong. God loves you.
He gave his only son. And if you were the only one on earth, he would have come just for you. And you're saying, you don't know what I've done. I feel so unlovable.
That's a lie of the enemy. Don't buy into that. He loves you no matter what you've done. And you can make that change in your heart today, turn your heart and your focus on him.
You know, you gave me something, Buddy, for a gift several months ago. And I still have it in my bedroom and it's a little plaque that said, it's great to fall in love, but what's even greater is to stay there. That's the staying love and the power of Jesus Christ. It's great to fall in love with him, but it's great to walk that love out, that love walk with him every single day that we don't lose our first love with Jesus.
So but when we go back here, Jesus loved that paralytic man that he wanted to say, I love you so much. I'm going to forgive your sins. And then I'm going to heal you. Jesus does the same thing for us today.
You know, the crazy thing is, is the scribes didn't see it that way. The evil in their hearts rose up. You could see it. Yes.
You know, it's such a contrast when you see the hatred and the despise and the things that unforgiveness roots into people, that they can't get beyond it. Jesus says, if we love him, the way that he loves us, you know, forgiveness is going to be pretty easy for us to do. So I want to encourage you, if you're checking yourself a little bit now and you're saying, man, I've got some unforgiveness in my life, let us go through the rest of this with you. And hopefully by the end of this program, you'll be ready and willing to give that back and just say, God, forgive me.
You know, I fall in short and I want to get this behind me because I want to live a life of love and a fullness. And that's really what you have. Don't take away the blessings that God has for our lives because of something that we want to control, something that we don't want to let go of. You know, Veronica was talking about, many people don't have someone to love them.
Well, I know that the Lord loves you. And I know that if you are only there hearing your voice right now and all you have is Jesus, you have more than enough. You have the love of the Creator of the universe who has given you a hope and a promise of eternity, of forever, of forgiveness, of being someone that is called a child of God, a child of the most high King, you have royal blood running through your veins, you are someone of worth to the Lord in the heavens. And if you don't see it anywhere right now other than what I'm speaking to you, I hope this is speaking to your spirit in a depth that you have never felt and you have a longing to know the one who we're speaking of that loves you.
It loves you even though you still are sinning against him in heaven. He wants to forgive you and I want to ask you now, I want to ask you this moment in time to stop, to take a breath. I said, I've lived this way long enough. I fought it hard.
I need to give my heart to you Lord. I want to feel that love. I want that forgiveness in my life. I want to be able to forgive.
All you have to say, Lord, forgive me of my sins for I know that I'm a sinner. I know you died on the cross for my sins. You were buried and you rose again on the third day. Forgive me Lord and make me new.
That's all you have to do. You've just been loved in the kingdom of God. I tell everyone that I wasn't forced into accepting Christ as my Savior. I was loved into it by God's people.
And I hope today you feel that embrace of God's want and love in your life and you've received him as your Lord and Savior. There's another verse we want to go to in 1 Peter and it's in chapter four beginning in verse seven. But the end of all things is at hand. There before be serious and watchful in your prayers and above all things have fervent love for one another.
For love will cover a multitude of sins. Be hospitable to one another without grumbling as each one has received a gift. Minister to one another as good stewards of the manifest grace of God. If anyone speaks, let him speak as the oracle of God.
And if anyone ministers, let him do it as with the ability which God supplies that in all things God may be glorified through Jesus Christ to whom the glory and the dominion forever and ever. Amen. Isn't that beautiful? I mean that sums it up so beautifully that you know all we have to do is love each other.
All we have to do is sincerely care and share this through the Word of God as an oracle for God not speaking in and of herself but with the gift that was given to us that we give it back freely to others that we nurture one another. We help one another. It's awful to see when a brother or a sister stumbles that we become judgmental. That's not for us to forgive sins.
That's for God to forgive the sins. What we do is we love them. God says we love them unconditionally. When Veronica was talking about how much I love her, I love her unconditionally.
I mean there is nothing she can do to change that. There's nothing God can do to change that. How much I love him. I will never be able to repay him for what he did for me.
For the change that he made in my heart and my life. I can never ever repay him if I lived two lifetimes or ten lifetimes. I could never repay him. He tells us that we've got to learn to forgive, to overlook the faults, the minor things in our lives.
All of a sudden we build into a mountain. If you've been in an argument and at the end of the argument you think what was it all about? You can't remember when it started over. You created all of these bumps and hurdles along the way to propagate something that is not love.
The enemy will use that to tear down relationships, to tear away your self-confidence. Because many times when you go through these tricks of the enemy through letting him use us, then at the end of the day, at the end of the argument, at the end of whatever the circumstance that we've gone through, we've pretty much made a fool of ourselves. And we've got to start backing up and backtracking. But the wonderful thing is God loves us so much that he knows our fallacies.
All we have to do is ask him to forgive us and he loves us enough that forgiveness is ours. And he tells us that we should live with that same forgiveness in our lives each and every day, that we should let others know that it's okay. We forgive you. We may not agree, but we sure forgive you because you're a child of God.
I'm a child of God. And that's what children of God are supposed to do. Love does cover a multitude of sins when we allow that to happen in our lives. Yes.
But hearts filled with evil and hatred will never understand the power of love. Satan will never understand the power of love because he's filled with hatred and anger and he wants to destroy. That's what evil is. And we see the scribes.
Their hearts were full of evil. They were not happy because this man who had been a paralytic for many years was now raised from his death bed basically and his sins forgiven. They just hated Jesus for what he had done because he spoke blasphemy. So you know hearts of evil will never understand the power of love.
And there is power in love. You continually love. The power of love Paul tells us about in the love chapter in 1 Corinthians 13. Paul says, though I speak with the tongues of men and angels, but I have not loved, I have become a sounding brass or a clanging symbol.
It's like it doesn't without love. It doesn't make a sound. It doesn't resonate with people. And you know when people are speaking to you in love, you know that in your spirit.
Although I have the gift of prophecy and I understand all the mysteries and the knowledge and though I have all faith and I can remove mountains. But if I do not have love, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, you know, it's in vain if you don't do it in love. And I give my body to be burned.
If I do not have love, it does not profit me. Why? Because in the end, when you are standing before God, your creator, if you have not lived your life in love, then you are going to be cast away. It will not make any difference what you have done unless you have a heart of love.
And this is love. Love suffers long and is kind. Love does not envy, does not parade itself. It is not puffed up.
It does not behave rudely. It does not seek its own. It does not provoke. And it thinks no evil.
It does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth. That's why the truth is so important because that's when love rejoices. Here's all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. And the main thing with love, love never fails.
So when we work and when we operate in love, love will never fail us. Why? Because God is love. But God will never fail us because He loves us.
He paid the ultimate sacrifice for us. That will never fail the love that He showed 2,000 years ago. When He gave His life for us, it's just as powerful today as it was 2,000 years ago. All you have to do is receive it.
And then if you have anything in your heart, any unforgiveness, any evil thought about somebody, else get rid of it. It's not worth it when you stand before God. It's not worth it to be puffed up and have the power and have all of the adoration of people and money and fame when you're standing before God. If you have, do not have love.
He will turn His face from you and you will be away from Him for all of eternity. And that eternity is along without God with bitterness and hatred and envy and strife. We need to check ourselves today. Yes, we've gone through some hard things.
And yes, we can harbor some things in our hearts. But if Jesus can forgive the very people who put the nails in His hands and His feet, then let's forgive and move on. We will forgive and we will operate in love. And we will say, God, we pour out all the contents of our heart to You because love will never fail.
Love will never fail. We'll never fail. We'll never fail. Lord, we need to pray for Buddy in love right now.
When we talk, He gets all choked up when He talks about love. You know, but oh, the beautiful places that we can go in our minds and our hearts. And we allow God's grace to take His there. It's a beautiful thing.
Even though I can't speak it. It's a beautiful thing. You speak of love. It's a beautiful thing, Buddy says.
When we allow the love of God in our hearts and our minds. So let's make a determination today that we as God's children love one another. We take care of one another. As the love says that we are kind and we lift one another up.
We help one another. We're not provoked. We're not rude. Let's stand shoulder to shoulder in this journey.
Let's stand shoulder to shoulder with the love of God because He has moved before us today and shown us the greatest love of all. We counted an honor and a privilege to come into your homes each and every week until we see you again this time next week. Remember, God is always faithful. Always.
Hello everyone. Veronica and I would like to thank you so much for partnering with Deaf Song Ministries through these many years. We appreciate your support, your love. We look forward each week to coming and being a part of your life in your homes.
Bring you God's Word. We are so humbled to receive your praise reports of salvation, of healing and restoration. We are excited to take this gospel across the world. We know this next season is bringing great harvest for His glory.
Thank you and remember the best is yet to come.