BVOV Magazine 2013 - present

because they bombed Pearl Harbor. I didn't like the South because they fought against the North in the Civil War. For some reason, I didn't like Black people. I didn't know why. "The Lord reminded me that I wasn't alive during the Civil War. I wasn't alive when Pearl Harbor was bombed. My life was being controlled by bitterness against whole groups of people and events that had nothing to do with me. I didn't hear another word that T.D. Jakes said. I picked up the remote and turned off the television. I was stunned. Infusion of Faith "Then the Lord said one more thing: Do you think you could get Kenneth Copeland on that television of yours?" Denver had heard Kenneth preach once in 1979. He'd preached from Ephesians on being seated with Christ in heavenly places. Picking up the remote, Denver searched for Brother Copeland's program and set it to record. From that morning forward, he got up each day and listened to Kenneth teach on faith. Over time, faith rose in his heart. Faith that God loved him. Faith that he could be forgiven. Faith that it wasn't too late to serve Him. One day Denver turned to Stacey. "You know how we go somewhere every year to celebrate our anniversary? I've got a great idea. This year let's go to the Southwest Believers' Convention." Stacey listened, staying quiet. There were some things she'd never told Denver. He had no idea that she wasn't a true Christian. That she'd committed the unpardonable sin and couldn't be forgiven. "I wasn't raised in a Christian family," Stacey explains. "My father was an alcoholic and we never went to church except for one brief stint when my uncle talked us into going. At age 9, I was born again. There was a lot of cursing in our house, which I repeated. One day I visited my Sunday school teacher and cursed. "She sat me down and showed me in the Bible that I'd just committed a sin that B V O V : 2 3 couldn't be forgiven. I grew up believing in God and Jesus, but I knew I'd messed up so bad that I could never be forgiven. Truth Revealed "Years later, when I was an adult, I met a woman who went to a Pentecostal church. She talked me into going. I'd never heard about the Holy Spirit or speaking in tongues. They had special services where everyone in church prayed for me to speak in tongues. They told me, 'You'll just start praying in other tongues.' It never happened, and I had no idea what was going on. I felt so much pressure that after a few weeks I stopped going to church. "I concluded that my Sunday school teacher had been right. I wasn't saved because I couldn't be forgiven. That's why I couldn't pray in tongues. Whenever I had occasion to be in church, I always looked at Christians as a special group of people. They were the ones God loved. "Since I wasn't really a Christian, I didn't want to go to the Believers' Convention. I stayed busy while Denver watched the broadcast. One morning I was washing dishes when Kenneth began preaching on Romans 8:1, 'There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.' "Kenneth said that the sin we committed happened then. But the Bible said that now we weren't condemned. I thought that couldn't really be in the Bible. Then I realized that I'd never read one. I'd taken other people's word about what it said. I went to a shelf and blew the dust off a Bible. Then I found Romans 8:1. It said just what Kenneth said it did. "I could hardly grasp the concept that maybe I wasn't condemned. That's when I started watching the broadcast with Denver and looking up scriptures. A 30-minute program might take us two hours to watch. We paused the recording and looked up each verse." "One day Kenneth said that God would give us the desires of our hearts," Stacey remembers. "I thought, I don't know what the desire of my heart would be. I don't have any desires. I'm content. Then something stirred I knew in that moment God was giving me a second chance to answer the call on my life.... I would never turn away from that call again.

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