Culture & Christianity: The Allen Jackson Podcast - How My Mother’s Faith Changed a Generation

Episode Date: May 8, 2026

What if one prayer could change the course of an entire family for generations? In this reflective episode, Pastor Allen Jackson shares the extraordinary story of his mother’s cancer diagnosis, the miracle that followed, and how one encounter with God transformed his family forever. From cultural Christianity to a living faith, Pastor Allen reflects on the power of generational faith, the importance of prayer, and why the truth of the gospel must be intentionally passed on. This conversation is a reminder that God still heals, still restores, and still changes lives today.

When I was seven years old, my mom, the doctors diagnosed her with cancer. And my mom said, if there is a God, that he would let her live long enough to know the truth so that she could tell her boys whatever that truth was. The change in our home was so dramatic that I walked in the kitchen a few weeks later and said, what has happened? You know, your God's story is not just your God story. It's connected to God's story in your life. But I want to encourage you to purposefully give your faith to the people.

that you're sharing life with. Welcome to culture and Christianity. Today's a little different for me. I think I can do this. This is going to drop just before Mother's Day weekend. And I thought it was an opportunity to tell you a little bit about my mom. In July, it will have been two years since she went to heaven. But my faith came really because of the faith of my parents.

I grew up. We went to church every Sunday, but we weren't Christians. I'm sure you all know you can do that. And we did that. In fact, my parents were the youth leaders in the church that we attended, and they weren't Christians. And so when my parents became Christians, it was such a dramatic change in their lives that it changed my lives and my brother's lives. I have two brothers.

And I want to tell you a bit of that story. And then I hope we're going to be able to share with you a conversation I had with my mom a few years ago on Mother's Day. So I'm going to tell you a bit of the story, and then she'll probably retell a portion of it from her own vantage point. But it really speaks to what I see the Lord doing today and what I know he's done in my life, and really to a much larger point that I would invite you towards. And that's this notion of a generational faith. I think we should lead our lives in such a way that our lives impact the generations who follow us. I think that's certainly true for the people that you share DNA with, the people that live in your home. But I believe it's

equally true for the people whom the influence of your life touches, your friends groups, your neighbors, your coworkers. We want to live in such a way that our faith changes a generation. The reason that matters is it only takes three generations to lose an idea completely. My grandfather wrote a horse to work. I'm okay with that because my father was a veterinarian and I grew up around horses, but a lot of people listening to me, if your life depended on it, I doubt you could catch a horse in the field and put a bridle and a saddle on it. It's a skill set that for thousands of years was normal for men and women, and is almost completely gone, and that's only in about three generations.

So it doesn't take long to lose an idea, and that's particularly true of our faith. The social values that shape our lives and our culture are changing very rapidly, and we want to lead lives of generational faith. It's a biblical idea. We know of the patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and very much a story where faith shaped one generation after the other. In the New Testament, we know of Paul, writing to Timothy, and he said, I knew the faith that was in your grandmother and in your mother, and it now lives in you too. So you and I want to be those kind of people. And that's really, I think, probably the lesson behind this whole podcast. So when I was seven years old, I'm the oldest of three boys, have two younger brothers.

When I was seven years old, my mom drove herself to the hospital. We lived in Columbia, Missouri. She drove herself to the hospital. My dad was getting ready to take national boards and graduate from veterinary school. And she was scheduled for a C-section. And when she was in the hospitals, the doctors diagnosed her with cancer and said she had about six months to live. And she had a brand new baby boy, a husband graduating vet school. two younger sons.

I mean, I can't even pretend to imagine the stress that would come with that. And the doctors wanted to do some pretty dramatic surgery on top of a C-section, which is just, and my dad said, no, much to the consternation of the doctors. My dad's response is I wouldn't do that to an old cow, that much surgery in a 24-hour window of time. And my mom's response, as you can imagine, was I'm no cow. but they scheduled a trip to Mayo Clinic the next week. And the pastor of the church they attended, the pastor where they were the youth leaders, it was Columbia, Missouri, it was a large fashionable church, it was a Methodist church.

The pastor came to visit, and he didn't believe in heaven or hell, which is not much comfort if you're facing death. And I think one point I would make in passing is the challenges that we're facing the church today of the apostasy, the falling away, the denial of the authority of scripture, the the blurriness on what moral and immoral is, all those things, an unwillingness to define marriage, an unwillingness to define and face cultural issues, that's not a new thing in the church. That has been percolating in theology and theological education and seminaries for decades. The reason it is so front and center today is we've spent several decades training clerical leaders,

church leaders, and institutions that were not godly and faith-filled. There are some exceptions, but many of them. And so our church infrastructure, it's the theological equivalent of the deep state. We have all these credentialed people leading churches that don't believe in the authority of Scripture, the divinity of Jesus, the uniqueness of the redemptive work of Jesus. They may believe in social causes and good things and kindness and benevolence and tolerance, but they aren't biblical. And I candidly don't care what the sign in front of the building says or what your clothing that you present is or you stand behind a pulpit. If you deny the redemptive work of Jesus and the authority of Scripture, it's not Christianity. Not a new problem.

It was flourishing in the mid-60s, and it is far more deeply entrenched today than it was then. And it's not going to be overcome simply. It's going to take a determination and a tenacity that we have. haven't seen expressed in the context of our faith in my lifetime. I think we were seeing the beginnings of it. It required some of that to overcome COVID in the attempts to shut down the churches. But it's not a new thing. Just as in a passing aside, the darkness in the church has been growing for decades. Doesn't mean God's intimidated. Jesus is still the head of the church. But stop sitting in dead churches. Go find a group of people whose faith is alive and

vibrant and vital and enjoy that community. And if you say my friends are in that place, so be it. Lead your friends to the light. I'm not condemning everything that they've done. Their history may be good. They may have made significant contributions to the social fabric of our nation, but you need a church that's vibrant and vital and alive. So my parents get on a plane to fly to Mayo Clinic. And my mom, my dad was reading a book on lameness in horses. He would have been. He was getting ready to go to work on the thoroughbred tracks. And my mom said a prayer, and we didn't know how to pray. She said if there is a God, and she said she really wasn't certain that there was,

that he would let her live long enough to know the truth, so that she could tell her boys whatever that truth was to be Jewish or Baptist or Catholic. And that was the prayer. She didn't ask to be healed. She didn't ask for a miracle. Those things were not in our vocabulary, our imagination. They weren't a part of our formation. So they get to Mayo Clinic and they start the workup on her and she's there for several days,

goes through all the departments, has a complete evaluation. And a doctor comes in a room late at night and said Mrs. Jackson. He was looking for my dad. Again, this was the mid-60s. The culture was different. And she said, no, he's gone for the evening. Will you tell me what you were going to tell him? And he said, I will.

He said, you had cancer. We had pictures of it. There's no question that you had a malignancy. but we've looked everywhere and every way we know to look and we can't find it. If you're healthy, go home and raise your babies. We didn't have a filter to process that with. My dad finished his graduation. Our family moved to Miami, Florida a few weeks later.

My dad went to work on the thoroughbred tracks. If you want to be an equine practitioner, that was one of the best places in the world to do that. And my family went to church every week. You know, that was the way that was, I tried every way to get out of it. There was no way. But my mom said, if the pastor didn't believe in heaven or hell, I'm not going to sit there. God's done something for me. So she worked in the nursery.

And my dad went to church and to Sunday school, and we all went along. And she's washing dishes a few weeks later. And she heard a voice. Now, we were Methodist. We didn't hear voices. But the voice said, you asked to know the truth before you died. And she said, yes, I did. And the voice said, I'm the way, the truth in the life.

and she had to look to find a Bible. The one in our home wasn't front and center. When she found a Bible, she looked until she found that in John 14. And it wasn't very long after that. The Sunday school teacher in the class where my dad went was an airline pilot, but he was born again in spirit-filled. And they stopped at his house one Sunday after church. And they left three boys in the car in Miami, Florida,

and went inside. and they knelt at a coffee table in his living room and asked Jesus to be Lord of their lives. And we went off and had lunch and did whatever we were going to do. But the change in our home was so dramatic. The temperature in our home went down. It was a pretty intense place, BC. And my parents changed so much that I walked in the kitchen a few weeks later and said, What has happened?

This is a different place to live. Now, I'm eight years old. and I don't understand what has happened. And my mom told me, my dad wasn't there, I asked her. She said they'd ask Jesus to live in their heart. And I said, well, I want to do that. And so I knelt in the kitchen floor at 4811 Jackson Street in Hollywood, Florida, and began my spiritual journey.

My parents and I were baptized in the Atlantic Ocean in Fort Lauderdale in front of the Sheraton Hotel a few weeks later. And they began going to Christian meetings in hotel ballrooms and home Bible studies and their whole life turned around as a result of that encounter with the healing power of God. And we moved to Tennessee a couple of years later, and my parents began having a Bible study in their home. And they would just play a cassette tape. My brothers and I would take care of the kids that came with whoever came along. We were not happy about it. We did it under protest.

We didn't like it. It didn't last an hour. They talked forever. But for a dozen years, they had that Bible study in their home. And that was the genesis of the congregation that I served today. Same DNA. So if you ask me what I believe about God, it really comes back to that story with my mom. I believe God can.

And then you can fill in the blank. I believe God can heal the body of a pagan who doesn't even know how to ask him to be healed. we weren't Christians. We weren't coming to the Lord in faith, asking him, trusting him. We didn't know God as Savior, let alone know God as healer or deliverer. All that my mom was aware of was she was facing death. And I believe God can change a life and change a family. And I have seen that repeated many, many, many, many, many times

through the years that we have served the Lord together. You know, this podcast is made possible because of sponsors. And one of our sponsors is preserve gold. And I appreciate their partnership with us. And I pray it's a blessing to you. You know, one of the things that I hear most often right now is this, that people are doing their best plan for the future, but they're not sure what to trust anymore.

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They've helped many people understand how to diversify their savings with physical gold and silver, including in retirement accounts. And right now, you can get their free wealth protection guide by texting Allen, it's A-L-L-E-N to 50-505. Plus, with a qualified purchase, you can receive up to $15,000 in free gold or silver. Well, if you want to learn how precious metals could help protect your savings, text Allen to 50-505 today. you'll receive your free wealth protection guide. In Revelation, it says that we overcome Satan by the blood of the lamb and the word of our testimony. And I remember as a young man, I was in ministry, but I was a very young man. I got a call to go to the hospital to visit a woman who was battling cancer,

that I didn't know. They were just asking me to come by and say a prayer with her. And I don't know why my mom went with me. It wouldn't have been typical, but she went with me that day. And when I opened the door to the hospital room, the woman, lit out kind of a low scream, really. And I didn't know her. I was a little taken back.

And I remember she cried out. She said, look what they've done to me. And she reached up and took hold of her hair, and she pulled out a handful of hair. And honestly, I wanted to run. I felt so out of place. And my mom kind of pushed me aside and went around me. And she went over and she climbed up on the bed, and she took that woman in her arms. And she began to pray for her.

and understood that my mom's experience was something that wasn't just a blessing to my family. And I began to unpack an idea that I would have missed completely. You know, when God healed my mom, I'm sure that was her miracle. She got to complete her life. She lived to be 89. She got to be my dad's wife. My dad kept the mother of his three children, that it was a miracle for him. But I also know very much it was a miracle for me that I got to grow up with my birth mom

and that that's a remarkable gift. And I remember standing in that hospital, that room with that day watching my mom with that other woman. And I realized that my mom's miracle was a blessing and a strength to other people as well. You know, your God's story is not just your God's story. It's connected to God's story in your life. and if we are willing to tell those God stories and share them with people and to live them out in the midst of our imperfections, God didn't heal my mom because we were a perfect family. I promise, I knew them all B.C.

But he nevertheless intervened in our family's life. And I believe he'll do that in yours. You know, God can heal a body, God can change a family, God can redirect a whole set of dreams that you hold. It doesn't mean everybody I've prayed with has been healed. I've had dear friends that have gone to heaven in my way of thinking prematurely, and it wasn't for a lack of prayer. On the other hand, I have seen a consistent set of supernatural deliverances from God, healings and miracles and things that defy explanation. So I know the God we serve as a miracle worker. It's not a theological point to me.

It's very much a concrete part of my own life journey. And on this Mother's Day, or as we're approaching Mother's Day, it just seemed appropriate to me to extend that invitation to you. I don't know the struggles you're facing or the challenges you have or the needs you have, but I know God is able to transform us from the inside out. My parents were so dramatically changed by their encounter with Jesus that they never went back to that original shape. you know when it was time for me to leave home when I was graduating from high school I was going 700 miles away to college and I knew I was leaving and I was done I never intended to come back to murfreesboro and I had a decision to make because I had been a Christian to that point out of respect for my parents I lived under their roof they fed me I thought I should behave as a Christian out of respect for them but it was time for me to leave home I wasn't sure what I was going to do yet I didn't know if I wanted to be a Christian and in the most powerful single component in that apart from God was I knew when there was nobody watching, my parents were still Christians. In the evening, when they got done with all the work to be done and the chores that went with the small business and three boys, they would sit down and read their Bibles and talk about it. When they had time for a day off or a vacation, they would go to a conference or a seminar and learn more about the Lord or go do something on a mission trip.

or they took us to Israel when we were little boys because they said they wanted us to love the land of Israel and the Jewish people. And at the time, I remember thinking, you all are weird. I mean, I had friends. I knew what friends' parents did, and I knew how they apportioned their time and their energy and their discretionary time, and my parents were different. And so when it's time for me to leave, I'm going,

God, I have to, I got to get this sorted out. I'm not going to be a Christian because of them anymore. I'll be a Christian because I think you're real in my own life. And the Lord began to deal with me. But I want to encourage you to purposefully give your faith to the people that you're sharing life with. If they're in your home, if that season is passed in your life, you're still engaged. You know, the role of the grandparent is not to be the spoiler in chief.

It truly isn't. That's the most carnal, selfish expression of grandparenting you can have. I believe the role of grandparenting is to help. help form and shape the character of those grandchildren, where you don't have the primary responsibility of being the first line of defense or the first line of discipline. You get to do it from a different seat and from a different life season, from a different set of experiences, but a profound impact in their lives. The same is true with your peer group or your place of employment. Generational faith is almost been lost to us. And we're going to

have to pick it back up as a value if our kids and grandkids are going to know the freedoms and liberties that we have known. Freedom and liberty does not come from a government. It doesn't come from a constitution or a declaration of independence. It comes from God. And it's only reflected in the lives of people who cooperate with God. And if we persist as a nation in refusing to cooperate with God, insisting on an increasingly secular state and secular education and churches that are more tolerant than they are holy. If we keep on that path, we will lose our liberties and freedoms. And it isn't a new set of politicians we need. It's a new set of Christ followers who are determined and intentional in leading lives that communicate a generational faith. And so I thought Mother's Day

was a great time. I sat down and did an interview with my mom. And I honestly don't remember the date. The crew is going to go find the video and I'll give you the dates. But I sat down and asked her about her story and what she had learned from that time until this. And I wanted to share it with you. You may have had a disappointment in your life. You may have had somebody you loved whose life ended early. You didn't get the miracle you wanted. Or it may be your case. You're walking through a battle. And before I hand this off to my mom, I want to say a prayer with you. Because God can, folks. God can change a heart. God can change a life. The part that's been most surprising to me through my journey is he typically starts with the change in my life. He starts with a change in my heart.

The things that I thought I had to have or the things I was so determined were going to be a part of my future. God has reshaped many, many, many of those things and allowed me to embrace his purposes. The last thing I ever thought I would end up doing was being a minister or a pastor, My spiritual formation didn't take place in a church. I became a Christian in the kitchen floor of a home. I was baptized in the Atlantic Ocean. My faith lessons didn't come from church. It took the Spirit of God to teach me to value the local church

and the value of a community of faithful people. And I want to pray with you, whatever place you're standing in, that you will know God is able to write to the end of your story in a way that will bring contentment to you and purpose to you. you and fulfillment to you. And if it requires his supernatural involvement, he is well able. Don't let fear dominate your life. Don't let threats and intimidation dominate your life. You choose to honor the Lord. My mother, if there was one legacy I have retained from her. It was her devotion to prayer. It was a joke with my brothers and I, because we couldn't, you know,

as we got older and our lives expanded, if we were ever together as a family, my mom would all before we could leave, she'd always say, well, aren't we going to pray? And it didn't matter if we'd been together the day before or it had been three months. If we were trying to, don't you want to pray? I can't tell you how many times she would stop whatever we were doing. I said, well, let's just pray. It became such an integrated part of who she was as a person. And I intend to maintain that in my life. And so I want to say a prayer for you. And then we will see about what's next, okay? Father, I thank you. Lord, I know that this is a digital connection, but it's not separated by space

from you. Lord, by your spirit, we stand together as certainly as we were standing in the same room. And you know the details of everybody listening. Lord, you know the joys and the challenges. You know the needs they have, the diagnosis that they've received. And I ask in the name of Jesus that you would intervene on their behalf. Lord, open a door where there has been no opening. I pray that you'll bring hope where there has been nothing but despair. I pray that you'll write a future where there is a litany of voices saying that this life is a disaster or there is no future, that by the power of a living God, you'll write a future that brings joy and contentment and fulfillment. I thank you that you're a God who delights in showing mercy, Lord, even to the wicked. And I pray

for every person listening to this that by your spirit, you'll bring hope and life and freedom and a future. I thank you for it in Jesus' name. Almost everybody I know wants to be healthy or healthier. And I think most of us would like it to happen to us by accident. But that hasn't been my experience. So what do we do in a world where there's so many options and diets seem to be like fashion trends? They change with every season. How do we respond?

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It's hard to eat enough protein sometimes as you age to maintain the muscle that we want to maintain. And those supplements have been very helpful for me. They've been gracious enough to give those of you who are listeners to our program. If you'll use the code fuel 26, you'll get a 26% discount sitewide on ancient nutrition. That's ancientnutrition.com. Let's make choices to be healthier, and maybe we can limit the pharmaceuticals will be dependent upon. That would be a God thing. God's moving in the earth, and we can be a part of it by what we put on our fork and not just the pills we take.

It's Mother's Day. If your mother is still available to you, you say thank you. If your mom's not still available, you say thank you to the Lord. There are no perfect parents. And so we're not grateful for our parents because they were perfect. We're grateful because God made them available and it gave us a beginning. And for that, we owe them a tremendous debt. And so this Mother's Day, I'll introduce you to my mom, Betty Jackson.

She's got a God story and she would share it with anybody that would listen. If you want to read it, if you hear enough in this and you want to read about it, that my parents put their story in a book, it's called An Extraordinary Life. You can get it from the website. The book is true. The pictures in the book are not. That's a lie. The pictures are true.

They're just embarrassing. But I hope you enjoy her story. And more than that, I hope you can receive what God has for you this Mother's Day. It was 51 years ago this past Thursday that I drove myself to the hospital, put the keys above the visor, and went in to get ready for the Cesarian section that I was to have the next. morning. George was taking the national boards from the School of Veterinary Medicine that day and he was very busy. When I got to my room that day my doctor followed me and announced to me that after the Caeserian section they wanted permission to do whatever surgery they thought I might need. I had been having problems with my

breast since I was 18 years old and every every pregnancy got worse. And I told him that I wouldn't sign any papers that my husband was coming that evening. And sure enough that evening, George arrived at the room and so did three doctors. And they were trying to convince George that I needed to do whatever they wanted to do to my breast after they delivered the baby. And I waited for George's response and he said, I wouldn't do that to a cow. And I thought to myself, I am no cow. But nevertheless, he made the decision, and I'm thankful for that.

Excuse me. I am thankful that by the grace of God, I stand here today, 51 years later, after I was given the diagnosis of six months to live. I stayed in the hospital those days, and they left me in a room by myself. Usually when you have a baby, it's a lot of fun. You get to know the girls in the room, and you talk about things that were such a pleasure, but that wasn't my experience that time, and I had a lot of time to think. We went home from the hospital on a Friday after being in the hospital seven days,

and a call came for a door opening for me to be taken to Mayo Clinic. And I said, yes. I called the doctor there, head of the OBJYine department, and he said the doctors in Columbia, Missouri were right that if I didn't have surgery right away, I would be dead in six months. So we made arrangements to fly to Mayo Clinic. And Philip was down in South Missouri with the... my parents. So little baby Doyle and Alan and George and I made our way to Kirksville, Missouri,

where we were to board a plane for Mayo Clinic. George's parents were going to keep the boys. And as we drove to the airport that day, Alan and I sat in the back seat, very quiet. Alan was just six. He was going to be seven in July of that year. And I'd been in the hospital several weeks in and out of the hospital before that time came. And so he was tired and frightened of being alone. And we stood on the tarmac in Kirpsville, Missouri that day, and Alan squeezed my hand.

He said, Mommy, please hurry. I can't make it much longer without you. And as we walked to the plane, as I took my seat, I looked out the window. And I thought, if he was, only knew he was so small and as we lifted above the clouds that day I prayed a prayer I had gone to church all my life but I did not know God I was rebellious I went to church with my parents but I thought I was wiser than they were and I would go my way and I would make a better life so as we were above the clouds I took

my x-ray out and I read the report from the doctors. And then I bowed my head and said a prayer that I know it didn't come from me. I said, if there is a God, let me know the truth before I die so that I can tell it to my children. I knew if I found out the truth and I told it to Alan, he would tell his brothers. I couldn't understand. We were living in Columbia, Missouri. We were involved in a beautiful church.

one of the larger churches in the city that had a pipe organ that I will never forget. But day after day, I would say to George, George, if I died, I would go to hell. And he would say, no, you wouldn't. And I would say, why not? And he would say, because you're a Methodist. But when I faced reality, it didn't work. And so I wanted to know, I said, why, if there is a God, Why do the Baptists go here and the Methodists go here and the Catholics here?

And the synagogue for the Jews is here. And so that day we traveled on to Mayo Clinic and I checked in. George helped me check in to the hospital. And later that night a doctor came and took me upstairs into that part of Mayo Clinic and spent hours with me. and I can remember sitting on the tables in that exam room moving from room to room and waiting for the doctor and finally he came and said, I would like to speak to your husband. And I said, well, I don't have any way of contacting him. He's asleep. It was past midnight, I think, by then.

And I waited a minute because I wasn't sure what I wanted to ask him. And then I said, can you tell me what you were going to tell my husband? And he said, yes. He said, I find no cancer in you. Then he walked across the room and put his hand on my head. And he said, go home and take care of your babies. And I said, did the doctors make a mistake in Colombia? He said, no, we see it every day.

And I can stand here today saying it's all. only by the grace of God. And I'm sure many of you can say that too. Seven months later, we had gone now to Florida, moved to Florida, and George was working on the track, and we went back to a Methodist Sunday school. And I said, George, I can't take it anymore. I'm going to work with the children. I want to be where Philip is.

He was little. He was in the three-year-olds, or four-year-olds maybe by that time. So I stayed with the children. I sang their songs. And then one day, we were convinced by George and our friends to stop by his Sunday school teacher's house who lived just down the street from us. And then he talked to us about making a prayer.

He said, if you will say this prayer, it will change your life. So we bowed at his coffee table, and we said simply these words. I believe that Jesus Christ is the son of God. I believe he died on the cross for my sins. I'm a sinner. I need a Savior. I receive you Jesus as my Savior.

We got up and walked out to the car where Alan was watching the little boys. And we drove home very quietly that day. But it was about three days before I stopped crying. very shortly after that probably maybe the fourth day I can't be really sure I had given the boys their lunch and they were playing around the house

we all were happy to be in Florida the children were happy George and I were happy and I as I was wiping the cabinets in the kitchen I heard a voice in my ceiling and this voice said

you said and I with my dishcloth, I said, and I looked up. That's all I did. I looked up. And this voice said, you said, let me know the truth before I die. And I said, yes, I did say that. And this voice said, I am the way, the truth and the life. I ran and got my new Bible and opened it to John 14, 6, where Jesus himself said, I am the way, the truth and the life. And then I knew it wasn't whether I was a Methodist or a Baptist or a Jew,

but it was whether I knew Jesus Christ. And I want to say to you today, Jesus Christ is the greatest thing that ever happened to a human being. He came and gave his life for us. Do not wait to open your heart to receive him. do you know even after he healed me I waited seven months to hear what I needed to hear and the day I said it he made it good

it wasn't three or four days till he appeared to me not in person but in his voice open your heart to Jesus don't pretend to be a Christian it'll destroy you but Jesus will make you have a new life I thank God for every one of you and I thank God for allowing me to share my story with you today. God bless you.

Lessons from Paul is a 90-day devotional. Some of my favorite verses that Paul wrote, a bit of devotional time and then some place to journal. The goal is to be changed. We want to be transformed by the Word of God and not just informed by it. Saul of Tarsus, a hero of mine. I got to know him as the Apostle Paul

an unrelenting advocate for Jesus in the face of unyielding persecution. Folks, that sounds like the world we live in. Lessons from Paul, it'll help you and I be overcomers, triumphant in this season in the earth. You'll enjoy the book. Following Jesus isn't always easy, but you don't have to walk through it alone. The same power that transformed Paul is available to you today. Lessons from Paul by Pastor Allen is a 90-day devotional filled with scripture, encouragement, and journaling prompts and space to write,

helping you apply each day's reading to your actual life. Request your copy with your gift of $25 or more at allanjaxon.com or call 800 8805102. We had family prayer time together. They participated in the prayer as much as we did. And we fasted for seven years on Wednesday. when they were not in school, they participated. We prayed for our community and for our nation.

And for a pastor that would open the doors of a church, we did not care what denomination or what the man represented except Jesus Christ. If he would let people have a place where they could be healed and be taught the word of God, where they could be free from demonic oppression, where they could know that there is water baptism and a place that the baptism of the Holy Spirit holds in our lives. And that's what we had in mind for Murphysboro. We wanted to see that.

We wanted to see the professional people come to the Lord because they are the influence, they help to influence the community. And it was a great day when Dr. and Mrs. Hackman, who are here tonight, became our fellow workers in the kingdom of God. We will always remember those early days when we work together to bring the gospel of Jesus Christ to bear in our community. I wanted to tell you that this morning we were out in the lobby. and this beautiful woman walked up to us and extended her hand and gave us her name.

And I hadn't seen her for several years. But when Philip was a young boy, we had a call from someone saying that there was a college girl at Vanderbilt Hospital, and she had a serious form of cancer, bone cancer. And so I said, I always looked for a boy to go with me to pray for someone when George was busy. Excuse me. So Philip was available, and we drove over to Vanderbilt. And when we got to this girl's bed, when Philip saw her, he crumbled.

He fell against the wall crying. It was his compassion. I know that touched her life. God healed her, and she was the girl that came across the lobby this morning to greet us. I think it was her second time in this church, and she had driven quite a ways. Now, what did you tell me to tell? Alan, do you have something to say? No.

That girl that came this morning, I was treated. when she was an 18-year-old girl at a horse barn down in Shelbyville, and that's where we actually first met her and got to know her at all. And then she showed up this morning with a 26-year-old daughter with her. She has remained healthy all these years, and I patted her on the back, and I told her how nice she looked and how happy I was that she had remained healthy. and she said, and you have remained healthy too. I didn't realize that she even knew that God had touched my life in that way. I wanted to say something to a very influential person in our lives

was not only Derek Prince, but his wife Lydia, whose daughter is here, Johanna in the church. We had the great privilege of knowing Lydia the last eight years of her life, and she was really good. to help me with the children. You know, as parents, we need a lot of help in parenting. And I appreciated, I appreciated Lydia the things that she taught me and the love that she had for my children.

When she came to our house, she would discipline the children. She would tell them if they were wrong. And I don't know how many friends you've ever had like that, but there's not all that many people that care about your children enough to say, don't do that. And she was a big blessing in our lives. And we happened to be with her in Spain in 1972 when she was writing, in the midst of writing the book, Appointment in Jerusalem.

And today we have the great privilege of being in Israel, praying that that book will become a secular book to the Jewish people and spread across the nation of Israel. You know, you think as you're moving through life, you think today I'm just doing this, but God has a plan. And I think it was Corey Ten Boom that said, when we look at our life, we see it's like an embroidery.

We see the back of it. And there are loose threads, there are knots, there are spaces that we haven't yet filled in. But when we have finished with it, we turn it over, and it's a beautiful picture of something. And I want to say to you, that's your life. You may just see the knots. You may see just your failures.

You may see the loss of your best friend. maybe you have lost your long love of life but God is still with you God is still with us whatever we face he is present to help us and that's the message that we have as believers we can go to our neighbors

and tell them no matter what they're suffering God is still with us and I want to tell you two things that I'll help you with that in a minute two things that I learned from Lydia and I still use them as Betty and I try and help people one of them I want any of you that are maybe discouraged or you know someone that's discouraged because their life they really feel they've messed it up so bad. And she said, don't try and unscramble eggs. Go on and take them the way they are and make

something good out of them. That was one truth, she taught us. And another one was, she said, if you take a pillow and open it and shake it outside a window, you'll never be able to pick all the feathers up and put them back in the window. It's too late once you've shaken that out the window. And we must be careful with how we treat one another and how we use our words, because when we're angry or we're hurt, our word at a time that we feel life is out of control, if we're not real careful with our lips, we'll begin to shake feathers out the window. And we'll say things that a few days later, we want to go pick those feathers up

and try and stuff them all back in the pillow and forget the things we said, but we can't do it. And I remember when she taught that to us many years ago. Now tell them, in 70 when we went to England, we met Uncle Sid. Well, we went to Israel the first time in 69. And we loved it so much

that we wanted to do. to take the boys to Israel. And so we came back, and one year later, in 1970, we took Alan and Philip with us back to Israel. And Doyle was just, he had his fourth birthday, the day we came home, so he stayed with my sister. But while we were there en route to Israel on the way home, we stopped in England, and we met a man by the name of

Sid Purse. He was a pastor there in England. And he sat at the table with us one day, and he heard us say that we prayed and fasted for our nation. And a few months after that, one evening, the telephone rang, and it was who we called Uncle Sid. We didn't know him. He was out, can you believe he was out at the Murfreesboro Airport. Somebody had flown him there, and he said, I have come for a week to help you get your marriage straight. He'd only set across the table from us for five minutes at the most while we were having dinner one night with this group of people in England, and you better be careful. The Lord knows a whole lot more, and he's apt to speak to somebody. And, well, he said, I have come to help you get

your marriage straight and I said well I hope you have a long time and he said I have a week and you better get busy but he stayed in the house with us and fasted and prayed and he taught us that we had to make restitution in our lives for things that we had taken that were not ours we had to make wrongs right with one another he said that we had to learn to live in forgiveness and that we had to have a strong relationship with one another in order to grow up children. And I tell you, we needed help. And we still need help.

I think one of the greatest challenges in life is marriage. And I don't believe that challenge ever goes away until we see Jesus face to face. and it's a relationship that is really worth working on. You know, when the boys were growing up, we had some rules in the house. Some of them were that we ate together every evening. And that was not without our knowing it, that was kind of an accountability time. We sat at the table and we shared what we had done.

that day. And then we had another little practice that we put into motion in the house, and that was no matter what you do, if you come and tell us, you will not be punished. And so they knew if they got the car in the ditch or they got the tractor stuck or whatever happened to them if they came to tell us they would not be punished and so one night we were having Bible study in the house and I still don't know what happened but the shower head got broken off or somehow in the shower it probably just fell off and I could hear Alan outside our bedroom door say to the boys, you better tell them.

You know, you better get it right now. And they, sure enough, they opened the door and one of them confessed. I don't remember which one it was. But there were just some things that we set in motion as a family. And they were good for the children. They were small things, but they worked good in our lives. The other person, are we running over time? The other person that really blessed our lives was Aunt Mary.

Aunt Mary had been a missionary to Cuba at the time of Castro's takeover. And she had stood and watched families destroyed. And some of those, when we moved to Florida, some of the women that came from Cuba were still there telling their stories. And I had the privilege of meeting some of those people. And Aunt Mary became our good friend. And she was always on our case to clean up our act and come to know the Lord better. And she was a very great influence.

in our lives. And then she also taught us what we learned as overcoming. That in the book of Revelation, it says, Blessed are they that overcome for they shall. It repeats that passage over and over. And she taught us that whatever comes against us is for our good. If we can trust God, it will turn out for good. And that was a hard lesson, but I want to thank the Lord for what she taught us because it's true.

We have seen now, after being Christians and coming to this age in our lives, how very much we need to know that whatever comes our way, God is not surprised. And he is in there with us to make us an overcomer. And that is a place of rest that we as Christians can come to. And I really thank God for Aunt Mary. I want to share one story with you. We were called to so many homes of dying people. And I always thought that was a great privilege to be with someone

when they were getting ready to leave this earth. If they didn't know Jesus, we could tell them. And if they did, we would get to watch them. them go. And so that was a great privilege we had. But there was one lady in Murfreesboro. She had a beautiful house. She had a good lifestyle. But she was in unity. That is a unitarian religion. And someone called us to say that she had cancer. And would we go to see her? So we did. And we invited her to go to several meetings where people were praying for the sick in those days. We had ballrooms around Middle Tennessee where Christians would gather and they would pray for the

sick. And I read in a book by Smith Wigglesworth and he said, there's nothing to do for these people, but ask them to renounce whatever occultic experience they've been involved in. And so over and over, I would take this woman with me, and she was so beautiful. At that time, she was a mature woman, and she had every kind of pretty clothes that you would want to wear. And I admired her so much, and I wanted her so much to renounce unity, and she wouldn't do it. And her cancer progressed until one day I was called to her home.

And I'll tell you this, many times I would drive to the home of a person like that, crying all the way, saying, God, I don't have the answer. What can I do? And that day, the front door, when I arrived on the street, was opened and I was welcomed in. And they had brought her to a room on the downstairs floor of the house, and she was in bed. and her pastor, who was not a believing man, I had talked to him many times in our community, and he was kneeling at the foot of her bed.

And I went in, and I can remember it was hardwood floors, and I just got on my knees in the floor, kind of back away from the bed, and I could hear her saying these words, why have I been so stubborn? Why have I been so stubborn? Why have I been so stubborn? And I stood up, very quietly she stood up,

and when she saw me, she said the room is full of black angels. And the lessons that we learn, the lessons that we all learn as we reach out to help people. sometimes can shape our own lives. Because I learned something that an occultic experience stays with us until death. And if we do not repent, we cannot mix Christianity and occultic experiences. And I am so thankful that in the body of believers here,

there are many ways to learn that God, by His grace has freed us if we will just ask him. Thanks for joining me today. Before you go, please like the podcast and leave a comment so more people can hear about this topic too. If you haven't yet, be sure and subscribe to Alan Jackson Ministries YouTube channel and follow the Culture and Christianity Podcast. You can do that on Spotify, Apple Podcast, wherever you get your podcast. Together, let's learn how to lead with our faith.

We can change our culture. I'll see you next time.