Hello and welcome to One on One. We are so pleased you've chosen Christian programming to be in your homes. We are honored and blessed that you have chosen us, Buddy and Veronica McLaughlin, to come and to break the bread of life with you and bring the good news. And yes, it is the good news of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
There's wonderful technology in just wherever you're hearing us from. We just thank you. You've carved out some time to let us share the Word of God with you. We love it.
We are modern day evangelists. People ask me what we do and I'm like, we have Angela. And we're going to talk today about, I love to hear about the revivalists of old. I mean, I love to hear about the old revivals, the awakenings, you know, the circuit writing preachers.
And I know of a story of George Whitfield, he was an evangelist in the early 1700s. And he's the one who really led the Methodist movement and led thousands of people to the Lord and he loved probably something I wouldn't love to do is be outside because of the rain and the, it's a hair thing. You know, I just, you know, I just like my hair to look, just, but he didn't care. But there would be thousands of people who would listen to him on those open air revivals.
And it was said that people could hear his voice from three miles away. That's, you know, our voices here, we're going into 114 countries all over the United States. I remember, you know, when we took a trip to Mexico that there were these guys that came up to us and we got off the plane. I, no way did I think they could recognize us.
And they were excited because they said, oh, we watch you on one on one. So, you know, our voices. Of course, the only one of Veroncos pictures. That was funny.
That was funny. Can we have your picture? Oh, no, we just want to hear. So, but our voices are going into all of the world.
You know, that's amazing. And where he would reach thousands in the 1700s, we're reaching millions. But that's what has to happen before Jesus comes back. He said, you know, this gospel has to be preached to all of the earth.
You know, that's God's grace so that people can hear the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ. And he loved to do that. We love ministering and preaching to you about the, it's something about telling the good news of Jesus, isn't it? Just that he is our hope, he is our refuge and that he is our all in all.
And George ran into some, I don't want to say, he ran into some naysayers. Well, that's what we all do. So, people who just didn't like the way that he was doing that was outdoor. It was unprecedented.
Right. Right. It was, it was all different in you. And yet, it wasn't fair.
It wasn't fair. It was into the kingdom of God. They just chastised him that he needed to be bringing those people into the four walls and having church indoors inside. I'm sure there were some women getting their dresses, muddies, some gentlemen who were getting their shoes, that meant a little messed up and, you know, maybe the rain and the mud just didn't suit them as, you know, and we all know those things.
I mean, you know, we recently, you know, even through COVID, we had to get outside of the four walls and there were churches and parking lots and outside and we had a wonderful time in a tent. We saw God do some glorious things with hundreds of people in a tent, people getting their hearts to the Lord and miracles happening in there. So, it was, it was really unprecedented for all of us. But I guess he was really getting criticized for what he was doing.
He was getting, I mean, all the good things going on. He was still receiving the criticism, but I loved his epitaph. He preached up until the day died and he had this epitaph put on his headstone. And it's so, it's so George.
Oh, George, he said, oh, here lies George Whitfield. What sort of man he was, the great day will soon discover. So he said, hey, don't matter what you think about me, God's going to be my judge. And I think he'll be pretty well pleased.
I mean, that was, that was really good. And you know, there are a lot of folks in the Bible that kind of went against the grain of a lot of things and got a lot of criticism. I mean, one that we love that we're going to talk about today is David. And he was, he received a lot of criticism.
I mean, there were some, some things that, that he tried to do a lot of things to help a lot of people and they just didn't get it. His brothers, his, his wife, I mean, Saul, I mean, all the people that he really had nothing but good to give, they criticized him in response. And David, he rose above it. You know, and that's what George Whitfield was saying.
He said, look, I'm rising above this guy. It's okay. The Lord will judge me when it comes to judgment day, that great day that's coming. And we should all live like that.
And hey, it's, you know, it's about who we are when nobody's looking. When nobody sees it's who we are. When the world is saying we need to be this way and we know we need to be another way and we don't succumb just to the pressure of people who have influenced power, who have, who have ways of, of convincing us that, hey, it would be a lot less painless to go ahead and give in this time. Well, this time leads to the next time, the next time, the next time.
And pretty soon we're going down a rabbit trail that's going to be a difficult ride back home. But, but David, he really, he struggled with Saul. We know, I'll know that story man. What a, what a journey from the shepherd's field being anointed king to the actual kingship.
And, and Saul, as much as he loves Saul, as much as he tried to help Saul, Saul had the spirit that he couldn't shake. And so he mounts up this army and goes after David and only David. I mean, they, they got no other mission now. These guys are seasoned soldiers, warriors, and they got nothing on their minds but David's head.
And Saul has nothing on his mind but David's head. And David is, is starting to feel the pressure that, that he's under the gun and this may not turn out well if he doesn't, if he doesn't work hard at saving his own scalp. So, he runs away. He does what any good guy would do.
He said, man, they're too many for me. I'm go hot. So, he makes a journey and we were there. It was really cool.
In the Enghati when we were in the Holy Land. And it's a very desolate place. It's a wilderness. You got to want to be there.
And only mountain goats, which with the hooves that you could only say on the side of the mountains and we're thinking David was, was here in this place as a place of refuge. You know, and we as ministry and when you follow the Lord, you know, you're going to have to go through that criticism. People are not going to like our message and what we have to say. Coming down through the years of 21 years of being in ministry, there have been people who have not liked our theology and what we believe and what we stand for.
But one of our friends just recently told us, Aaron, who is here in the TV studio, he said, you know, you may not, they may not understand the theology, but they cannot deny the miracles. And the miracles that we have seen and the anointing that comes with those miracles, even with David, he was anointed. And when you are anointed, the enemy will come after you with everything with the armies of hell he will come after you. We have fault and there have been many times even in ministry we thought, are we going to stand?
You know, doors would close, but other doors would open, but you have to rise above it. That was one of the things that my grandfather loved to tell me. He said, people aren't going to like what you say and what you do all of the time. You're going to have to listen to the voice of the Lord and you must be obedient to what God tells you to do.
And that's not a popular thing. It's not popular. It doesn't go along with everybody else. He said, you know, the road of destruction is very broad and everybody's going to go on that road.
But this is a narrow road that you have chosen, a narrow road to choose to follow Jesus Christ and follow those principles and follow his life. And he said, people are not going to like you. And I'm like, well, why wouldn't they like me? I'm nice to everybody, but it's not me.
It's the spirit of God that lives with inside of me. And that's what happened with Saul and David. Saul became very jealous of that spirit that was in David. And he was relentless to come after him to try to destroy him.
We see that in the world today. The world as a whole is relentless to shut down Christian values and what we believe and what we stand for that we have to make a stand and we have to rise above it. And we have to know that Jesus Christ is our refuge. That's where David went.
He went into his cave and he went into his refuge. And that's where we're going today. In Psalms 57, we're going to see this psalm that David wrote when he was on the run and he was crying for mercy and for refuge. It says, be merciful to me, O God, be merciful to me for my soul trusts in you and in the shadow of your wings.
I will make my refuge until these calamities have passed. You know, he's saying this over and over again, God be merciful. Please be merciful. Help me in this wilderness.
Help me in this cave. I will cry out to God most high to God who performs all things for me. You're saying, God, nothing's impossible with you. You perform all of these things for me.
He shall sin from heaven and he shall save me. He reproaches the one who would swallow me up, Silla. He shall sin forth his mercy and his truth. My soul is among the lions.
I lie among the sons of men who are set on fire whose teeth are spears and arrows and their tongue as sharp as a sword be exalted, O God, above the heavens. Let your glory be above the earth. They have prepared a net for my steps. My soul is bowed down.
They have dug a pit before me into the midst. They have themselves fallen. Silla, my heart is steadfast. O God, my heart is steadfast.
I will sing and give you praise. My glory, awake, the loot and the harp. I will awaken and dawn. I will praise you, O Lord, among the peoples.
I will sing to you among the nations for your mercy reaches into the heavens and your truth into the clouds. Be exalted, O God, above the heavens. And when I read this, it's so similar to many of the Psalms that we begin and David begins and he's like, oh God, you've got to help me. Oh God, you've got to be merciful to me.
Oh God, I'm crying out to you. You are my strength. You are my refuge. It starts out one way and then it begins to shift and you see him saying, my heart is steadfast.
Oh God, I'm not going to be moved. God, I am going to praise you. He ends up in a place of praise. That's his refuge.
That's been our refuge. When we've called out to God, when we've gone through calamities, we may start saying, God, where are you? Please be merciful. But then it always winds up.
God, we thank you. We praise you. We love you. We give you glory.
And I can just imagine him coming out of that cave, giving God all of the praise and glory. You know, it's painful. It's painful watching him get to that point. We see this time and time again.
I mean, we're rooting for him. We know. It's like you're going to make it. You're going to be king.
The wonderful thing is, is we never see David get mad at God. We never see David blame God for the situation he's in. And just say, why are you doing this to me? You know, God, I'm your pet here.
You're getting me. You know, this isn't fair. You told me. You told me.
He never does that. He never backs lines on God's love. And on the fact that he respects God. He respects what God, the path he's chosen for him.
He may not agree with it. He may not be comfortable there. But he doesn't express that. He just says, look, God, you know, he talks about the laying down his soul with the lions.
I mean, think about that. We've all felt that way. The man we're right in the midst of, we're in the thick of it. This could go either way.
And one way is not going to be good for me. But the wonderful thing with David, even though David compared the people who were chasing him to the fierstness of the lions, and believe me, they were. They had nothing in mind but David's head. That was it.
That's all they wanted was to take that sword and stroke against the side of his neck as hard as they could. And David knew that was his faith if they caught up with him. But he said, God, you know, even though my soul lies with the lions, what he was saying is God, you've got him on the leash. You've got him leash, God.
You know, we got to look that way when we're in the midst of our troubles that we just don't see the trouble for what it is. But we got to look beyond the trouble that God has those problems on the leash. He's got him on a short leash. Sometimes we give him a lot of room to maneuver around.
David wasn't doing that. But then he goes on to talk about, you know, that he struggles a bit more and he talks about bowing down, you know, that they prepared a net for my steps. You know, you start picturing it all again. You know, this is a big net.
These are a lot of guys. And you know, it's easy for me to get caught in the middle of this thing. And my soul's bound down and they dug a pit. All of a sudden he's back there feeling the pain and the pressure.
And it's okay when we do that, but we just don't stay there. It's like Veronica said, he's going to find his way to the end of that cave. And he's going to lift his arms and he's going to worship and praise God for the great God that he is, for the mercy that he extends to David and gets him through this. We all know that David gets through this and becomes the king.
But boy, when you're there in the moment, that when it tests your true metal, that's when it tests who you are for Christ Jesus, that's when it tests what you really believe. And David said, God, I believe in you. Although their tongues are like swords, you know, they're like men who are set on fire. They're bristle, you can't touch them.
They're too mean. It's too bad. It's too painful to touch them. But God, I know you.
I know you, Lord. And I glorify you. My heart is steadfast. And I remember the thing that God said about David.
He was a man after my own heart because he said, my heart is steadfast. It's not steadfast to be the king. It's not steadfast to kill Saul. It's not steadfast to make all this end, although all those things, I'm sure we're in the back of David's mind, what he was doing in that place of refuge, yes, even in a cave, even in a dark place with your fate, likely going to be something that everyone would fear.
He sees the fierceness of the people who are after him. He sees the desolation of this cave. What does he do? He worships.
He worships God. He praises him that he knows God will lead him to solid ground. God will lead him out of this mess. And even if God chooses not to lead him out of this mess, his heart is steadfast.
And that's what we've got to be in our walk. Ronny and I share these words with you and share this message with you from our hearts to yours because we want you to know that, yeah, there's going to be some difficult times. We're not guaranteed a better rose as, oh, that's what I thought I would get whenever I gave my heart to the Lord. I had no idea what serving God really meant.
But it does. It comes with criticism. It comes with sacrifice. It comes with being in church when you'd rather be with your friends out of all game, but you know where your heart should be because your heart's steadfast.
It's when you want to read and study when there's a multitude of other things that you could be involved in, but your heart is steadfast. It's when you want to believe with someone for a miracle in their life when you've never seen a miracle happen. Your faith is a substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seeing your heart is steadfast. You put your heart steadfastly toward the truths of God poured through trusting Him completely, allowing Him to work in your life and others' lives.
I'm telling you, we're reading this to you because David left an impression on millions and millions of people. We're still talking about him today. And it's because his heart was steadfast after God. Yeah, the stories are awesome.
But when you narrow it all down, when God put it into context for us, He said David was a man after my own heart. And that's what this is all about. It's not about the circumstances. Yeah, you know, it makes a great movie, doesn't it?
He's got all of the things that a movie, the drama, the danger, all the things floating around. But at the end of this movie, they're still there looking for David chasing him down. But what David doing, he said, he said they gave looking at the heavens, worshiping the one that he loves more than life itself, that he has dedicated his heart and his life to. Yeah.
That comes with criticism. It comes with issues because the rest of the world, in there with you, sometimes you feel pretty alone. But I'm going to tell you, there are millions of others around this world whose heart is steadfast and believe with you. And don't listen to the cares of the world and the naysayers and the ones who would lead you astray.
The ones who would give you false hope and give you false words to try to encourage you down a road that you shouldn't go. David had none of that. He said, my heart is steadfast. And that's so true, buddy.
And before he says that, the scripture that gets me says, they have dug a pit before me. They dug a pit and they're going to throw me in this pit. They have set a net for my steps. And there's another David who is a friend of ours who became very ill with COVID and ended up on a ventilator in the hospital who we were praying for.
And he told me, he said, Veronica, he said, I had a dream one night and I saw my grave. And the grave was exactly the shape of my body. And it was cut out just for me. The enemy had dug a pit for me.
And he said, then I felt the hands on my back. And he said, Satan pushed me. He'll push you. He wanted to destroy me.
He said, he pushed me and I began falling, falling, falling, falling into that pit that was shaped like my body that was my grave. And he said, before I got to the bottom of that grave, that pit, I heard Jesus say, no. And when that happened, he said, it stopped. I stopped this far from that grave and that pit.
And I came back up. And he came back up. And he was healed and came off of a ventilator and has an awesome testimony today. The enemy has dug a pit for all of us.
But we have to have our hearts steadfast on him. And what happened? He said, I will sing. When you start singing, something starts breaking in the heavenlies.
Something starts breaking in the atmosphere. When you start praying, something starts breaking. He said, and give praise. And then he's like, awake, my glory, awake.
Awake the lute, awake the heart. Awake all these musical instruments. Guys, go get the harp and the lute. We're, lute, lute.
We are going to do some praise and worship. I said, we may be in the darkest of night when we are doing this, but I will awaken the dawn. I'm speaking to somebody today. Let's awake the dawn.
It's always darkest before the dawn. We've gone through struggles. We've gone through hard times. Our nation has gone through struggles.
We have lost loved ones who we dearly love, but now it's time to awaken the dawn. I speak unto your life today that dawn is getting ready to break. You've been in one of the darkest seasons that you've ever walked through. But God is saying dawn is breaking.
You know, raise your hands and praise the Lord. All my people, I will sing for the nations. He said, I'm going to sing for your mercy reaches into the heavens. It's time we raise our hands.
Give God all of the praise and glory. Yes, it's been dark. Yes, the enemy has dug a pit. But the enemy says he has no authority because God says no, just like he did with David.
No. Speaking that into your life today, no. The enemy has no authority to push you any longer. Now let our voices arise.
Let us praise God. And it says in the 11th verse, be exalted, O God, above the heavens. He started out saying, Oh God, be merciful me. God, I trust you, but God, I'm in trouble.
And in the very last verse, he says, God, you are exalted. You are the one and we give you praise and glory. But in order to get out of this dark place, we raise our hands and we sing and we praise and worship and we trust because we know God's mercy reaches far above the heavens. You know, let your heart be steadfast.
I mean, I can't stress that to you enough. If there's nothing else you do this week purpose that you're going to keep your hearts steadfast against everything that everyone would say or think or feel or fear. Don't let those things enter into your determination, to your resolve to be a man and a woman after God's own heart to really run after him like David was. David was struggling, but he was still running after God.
And it's okay. We're going to struggle. But boy, we've got a hand that's going to reach out and it's going to hold on to us. He says he'll never leave us.
He'll never forsake us. He will stick closer than a brother. That's the one I want to run to. That's the one that pulled me out of the mire that gave me a hope and a promise.
And he's here today to give you a hope and a promise. He's here today to speak into your life. As Veronica said, she was speaking into your life. No, we're not going to let the enemy come and rule our fears, our doubts, our compassion to serve him.
We are not going to let the enemy steal and rock these things from us. We're going to let them take our children. Let them take our families. Let them take our communities, our nation, our schools.
We're not going to let him have those things. Those are the things that God has put us to take care of. We need to come out of our cave and we need to stand out there and raise our hands and start praising God for the great things that he is doing on our behalf because he loves us that much. Well, we love you and God loves you until we get to see you again next week.
We ask you to love each other, keep your hearts dead fast and to know that God is always faithful. Hello, everyone. Veronica and I would like to thank you so much for partnering with Dufsong 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. We hope this program has enlightened and enriched your life. This ministry is made possible by the grace of God and your generous financial support.
If you would like to partner with our ministry to spread the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ, write, call or visit our website at www.buddyandvaronica.com. We look forward to visiting with you again soon. Until then, remember, God is always faithful.