 Welcome to Hope Today. I am so excited that you have tuned in because I believe there is encouragement, there's edification, and there is hope that is available just for you. So get ready, lock and load, ready your weapons, because great things are getting ready to happen for you. I'm J. Anthony Gilbert, alongside the incomparable, Pastor Amy Schaefer, good to be back with you. Jay, great to be with you in that big, deep voice that you have. Come on. God uses broken people with broken hearts and lives to bring healing and salvation to a broken world. In turning sorrow into joy, Pastor Kent Christmas, details how to fulfill God's purpose for your life despite your story and encourages readers that God has a plan. He will fulfill it in his time. You know, Jay, so many people in the Bible that we read the men and women of God, we love their stories of faith, we love their stories of victory, but we forget about sometimes the incredible struggle, the incredible discouragement, the incredible despondency that they went through to experience that great sweet victory that they found because of faith in God. So today I think it's gonna be a great, sort of like awakening for all of us that God can turn our pain and that sorrow into joy. And that's so important that we understand that there's a process that we all have to walk through to get to progress. And by watching today's program, you're gonna learn how God can turn your brokenness into healing, adversity into blessings, and despair into victories. It's gonna be a phenomenal time of encouragement just for you. And on tomorrow's Hope Today, we're gonna be having a special edition, guess what, of Stump the Viewer. Not the host, but the viewer. To commemorate Cornerstone's television's 45th anniversary. And watch this, everyone who participates and guesses the correct answer will win a prize. And not only that, but only one randomly selected person who guesses correctly will win a $45 gift card. You gotta love that. That's once again on tomorrow's edition of Stump the Viewer on Hope Today. That's brand new to my knowledge, so I think that's gonna be kinda cool. I like that, because it takes the pressure off of us, stumping the host back onto the viewer, because they're sitting there, they're watching us, and they're judging us, Jay. That's right, they sure are. And we know that you've missed a couple of those stumps. Well, I had my moments, but you know what, I think the deck was stacked against me, to be honest with you, that's just my take from it, but listen, you've gotta get a chance to get in on that, get that $45 gift card, get in on, test your own biblical knowledge, and see if you can come up with the right answer. It's gonna be fun. Let's get on with this incredible show that we have today. Our next guest is a pastor and author who knows what it is like to feel rejected and defeated. He also knows how God can turn heartache and betrayal into blessings and victories. Pastor Kent Christmas is the author of the book, Turning Sorrow into Joy, and he joins us now to share how God has a purpose and plan for you, no matter your circumstances. Pastor Kent, welcome to Hope Today. Thank you, thank you so much. I'm thrilled to be with you. It's great to have you all the way from Nashville. I know that a lot of people in my church are always texting me your services and clips from prophetic words that you have, bringing them to my husband and I's attention. So we thank God for you and your ministry and your church and you're really your voice to the nation. Thank you, Amy, thank you. It was an honor to, oh, go ahead. No, go ahead, I didn't wanna interrupt you there. Well, it was an honor to read your book, your new book, and really your life story. You dug into every detail and just, you know, here, I'm on the tail end of your, well, I'm not the tail end of your ministry, but you know, decades later from when you begin the story, but go back to the beginning. What did life look like for you? Well, you know, it started off really good as a child and then, you know, obviously in my book, I tell the story when I was 12, my father, who was 38, died unexpectedly and boy, it seemed like that just precipitated just a chain of events and you know, it's difficult for a child to lose their father and I think it altered me, you know, changed my personality. I became reclusive and books became my best friend and as you get older, you find that, you know, pain, I know this, that pain is tied to purpose and you know, a lot of times in the infancy stages of our life, we don't have clarity as to what God's calling us to do and we'll think the events that we go through are just random, but they're not. The Bible says the steps of a righteous man are ordered by the Lord and God will put us on a path that is filled with a lot of adversity and you mentioned at the beginning about some of the great heroes that we read about in the scriptures, but you'll find that every time you get around somebody who really impacts people and has an anointing on their life, there is a hidden story of personal loss, personal pain that they've gone through to get there because you cannot be used by God in a powerful way until self is broken. And boy, you know, the only way we die to self is through the cross and it's not a one-time thing. Jesus said, you have to carry your cross. It's a daily thing. And so I'm not sure if retrospect if the Lord would have told me everything I had to go through to get here, if I would have said, okay, let's do it. I might have said maybe you need to pick somebody else. And so I think that's why God doesn't let us see what we go through, but he gives us the strength to make it. No truer words have ever been spoken and can you just take us back to a couple of key moments of adversity in your life where you just thought this might stop right here from me moving forward the rest of my life. Can you take me to a couple of those stories? Well, you know, as an adult, I'm a late bloomer. You know, I've been in June, I'll be preaching 53 years. And I never really saw any success, I guess what men would define success as far as ministry. It seemed like everything was always hard. And I think part of that was just so that I wouldn't learn. This is what I know about serving the Lord. Jesus has to be enough. That's why Paul said nothing can separate me from the love of God. So, you know, you're asking me about events that maybe defined or you felt like I can't go on. One of them was when my first wife, you know, messed up and fell into adultery. And that just about killed me there. That was one of the hardest things ever went through in my life, but it also, you know, I quit preaching. I never quit serving the Lord, but you know, you can go through things that just got you out. And I know this, that when God is getting ready to retool who you are, I never moved in the prophetic until 35, I was 35 I think, and I had come out of this divorce and God had moved me across the country. I wound up homeless, I slept in my car and just as low as you can get, lost everything and seeking the Lord, trying to get out of those holes. But God, when God's getting ready to do something new in your life, don't be surprised if you hit a wall. And it's almost like God will shut down what you've been doing to prepare you for what you're getting ready to do. And when I finally came out of that time in my life and begin to feel a stirring, that's when God began to put on me the mantle of the prophetic, never raised around it, didn't know what it was. And so it was new to me. But I had reached a place that I had complete trust in the Lord. And so that was a very difficult time. My youngest son was born over three months premature and I stayed in the hospital for three months and when he was born, we had a horrendous medical bill, we had no health insurance, we were so broke, we had our electricity shut off twice, we had our phones shut off. And this was in a time that me and my wife were giving 50%. God challenged us to give 50% of our gross income. And that's why we were in such a struggle. And when we came out of that, God raised up my son. He's 30 today and he's healthy. He's never had an operation. Everything that doctors said did not happen. God paid the medical bills and loosed a realm of faith in us, but that was a defining moment. When two years ago, we had another blow, my 43-year-old son who, God had really done a great work in his life delivering him several years ago from homosexuality to the point he lived with a man. I watched God turn that boy's life around and completely deliver him, restore his masculinity. He got married, he had two children. He was preaching the gospel when he died and to preach my son's funeral. And it was a defining moment that you can't question God. You just got to trust him. And so I think over the years, these moments, you can't feel the pain of other people till you feel the pain of yourself. And I think maybe one of the greatest lacks in modern ministry in the pulpit of the days, we have too many men that have never tasted defeat and don't understand the pain of the sheep. And to be successful in God, you got to have compassion. Prophetic people that don't have compassion are dangerous. And to be able to move in that realm with the love for people is very important. I'm doing all the talking here, I apologize. No, it's so powerful. When did these moments of pain and sorrow, when was the shifting when they started to turn into joy? Well, you know, coming through the divorce and winding up, you know, it's early 30s, single again, God supernaturally let me meet a woman that, you know, I thought when I got married, if I got married again, you know, probably would have to settle for a much less than what I wanted. And God allowed me to meet a wonderful lady. She'd never been married before. And here I was, you know, broken divorced and basically unemployed and had an eight-year-old child. And we just celebrated our 36th year anniversary. And that turned into joy. If you will let God, he will take the most difficult times of your life and he'll flip them and you just gotta trust him. And so, you know, in every instance in my life, that's why I wrote this book. I didn't wanna focus on the dark times. I want people to know whether it's death, divorce, loss of a child, bankruptcy, it doesn't matter, your ministry doesn't work. If you will stay true to God, I'm living proof that God will not forsake you and he will come through. And if you humble yourself under the hand of the Lord, he will exalt you and do season. So I can say we have a great victory. You know, we pastor for years and it was a small church and I did everything I knew to do from advertising and different things. We could not make our church grow. And yet here today, our church is very large and we have an international footprint. And you know when I step under that platform now because of all the stuff that I've been through and maybe the age that I'm at, there's nothing in me that says, look what I did. I know unequivocally when I minister to large crowds into our church, just the mercy of God, just the hand of God. And it's very easy to give God the credit for what we have today. So beautiful. I wanna fast forward a decade or so to the year 2020. And years before your wife who has the best name ever, candy Christmas. I mean, you can't beat that name. No, that's God sent you humor. Yeah, that's a joy. She said over you that you will be a prophet to the nations. Can you take me to that moment at the return in 2020? And the prophetic word that you gave that really blasted your name and your ministry into millions of homes. Well, when my wife told me that we were dating and so that was 35 years before it ever happened. I thought, you're crazy. And we had the invitation to go to the return hosted by Jonathan Kahn and Kevin Jessup. And I told my wife, I said, I'm not going to that. I'd been to a couple and I said, it's just symbolism without substance. And she said, no, I really believe that God is gonna have you give a word. And so I went with one of my wonderful friends, Burton Gore, and we were there for a couple of days and they had me on the docket for the last day and the last of the day, in fact. And as I'm standing on the backstage, there's just well over a hundred thousand people on the mall and I don't have anything. I mean, God is crickets. And I texted a guy said, this is either it can be really bad or really good because I have nothing. And I thought, well, I'll just go out and pray. And when I put my hands on the podium, boy, the spirit of the prophetic hit me and God began to just come out of me. It was just a roll. And they had told me beforehand, and you know, it's about television. They said, you got five minutes and if that light goes red and you keep going, we'll turn off your mic. So I was very cognizant of staying within my timeframe. And they said, I went four minutes and 20 seconds. And what's odd is what I did that day was normal for me. I didn't think I had done anything extraordinary. And a lot of times when God's gonna catapult you into another dimension of exposure, you don't realize it. And I went home, I thought, well, you know, God, thank you for the word of the Lord and for not letting me fall on my face and not realizing that that moment was God unveiling my ministry to the world. And so it, you know, it took a few months, but all of a sudden our church, we went on a December 27th, 2020. Our church had stayed small, 100 people and it was two days after Christmas. And I told my wife, I said, you know, we'd be lucky we have 40 people today. It was snowing, there was ice on the ground. It was, you know, close to Christmas. And I got to the office early and my wife came in about 9.30 in the office and she said, what in the world's going on? She says there, and I said, what do you mean? She said, the church is packed. An hour before church, God began to prophetically fulfill what he had promised us. And from that moment on our church started growing by 100 people a Sunday. I still don't have any explanation. We weren't on TV, we're doing anything different. And it's morphed into what it is today. And so when it's time, you just have to trust God. So, you know, the seasons of our fruitfulness vary with the individual. Some people, they maintain the body of Christ over 30, 40, 50 years. And then there are other people like John the Baptist, God will just raise up for a season. And so, would I have liked to have had success for all of those years? Yes, but oh my goodness, I found the sight of Jesus in intimacy and relationship in all of those years that I wasn't successful, that keep me grounded now. Kent, that is such a beautiful, powerful story. And I know it's just blessing so many people that hear it. This past Easter, 2024, somebody sent me a link to your church service. I thought, you know, I'm just gonna watch it. It was the day after Easter. I was just kind of decompressing after a busy weekend. I'm listening to it and your wife gets up before you preach an incredible message about the kingdom. And she says, we wanna welcome you from Illinois. You're here from Connecticut. You're here from the North Pole. You're here from Astra. I mean, she, country, state after state. And I was like, how good is God? Can you take a minute, go ahead. We, you know, it's strange. We're still not on national television. And then we live stream, we're getting ready to be on national television or church, but we average 100 countries every Sunday that watch us. Our church, it's very unusual. We have a tremendous amount of people that move to Nashville just to be in the church. And we probably average about 20 different states that show up every Sunday just to be able to partake of the service. So I just kind of just smile and you know, I think only God could have done this. Pastor, will you just take a minute and just pray for all of those that are watching that are hearing your story, they're feeling discouraged and in despair and they need to see that joy and that breakthrough that God has showed you. I will, God, Lord, do you feel the pain of people? Lord, I just, oh, in the name of Jesus, God, go through the camera, get in the homes of these precious men and women, the brokenness that they feel. I pray, God, that you would lose hope in their spirits. Give them the strength, God, to get back up. Lord, weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning. Rebound the word of the Lord in their spirits, hallelujah. God calls your servants to begin to feel the inspiration of your spirit. Holy spirit, drive out every attack. Let physical healing, Lord, begin to flow through their bodies. Lord, give them the strength to believe that their children are coming home, marriage is gonna be healed. And I thank you, Lord, that you never forsake us, that you are a present help in time of trouble. Open their eyes to seek God, that the best days of the church are ahead of us. In God, we give you praise and we give you thanks. For, Lord, you are a God of great compassion and we lean on thee in Jesus' name, amen. Amen, Pastor Christmas, thank you so much for this incredible book, Turning Sorrow Into Joy, A Journey of Faith and Perseverance. We bless you and bless your ministry and bless Kandy. Thank you for having me and God bless both of y'all. God bless you. We'll be right back after this break. God is calling you to do something significant in the earth for him, regardless of your age, skill set, or perceived limitations. What's holding you back? 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Well, such a powerful interview that we just had with Pastor Kent Christmas and listen, I believe that there are people watching right now that you are in the middle of one of the heaviest battles of your life that you feel forsaken, you feel down and out, you feel downtrodden and you're wondering when are things going to change? Let me encourage you just for a moment. I believe even on April 8th, the Lord spoke to me that we are in a day and an hour and a season where it is post eclipse and pre-eclipse that we are in a turning point and I believe you have tuned in because you have been in the middle of the process and God wants you to know that you are not forgotten. He knows your name, your email, he knows exactly where you are and his eye is on the sparrow and he is watching over you and that you are getting ready to have a head-on collision with supernatural favor in your life. God's about to turn your sorrow into joy and if you are battling right now and you're saying I need a miracle right now, I need God to step in right now, I want you to pick up that phone and dial 888-665-443 and say this man of God, Pastor Kent Christmas was speaking to me, I feel the pain and the sorrow and the agony and I'm in need of a supernatural breakthrough. You know, Pastor Amy, I really felt the Lord spoke to me that when this eclipse hit that there was a prophetic shift that was going to happen even with him coming on, sharing all the things that he has been through. There are people that are in line for unnatural, supernatural favor coming into their life. No, what a great illustration because it's like life looks like this one day and it just seems like discouragement, discouragement, sorrow, pain and then all of a sudden there's this moment and you feel like you are in the dark, you feel like this is not gonna, I'm not gonna come out of here, I can't make it, I can't live another day, I can't take it anymore, it hurts too bad and all of a sudden that sun starts to poke through and the goodness of God, here's the deal, God is faithful, God is good, like he is good to the core. Goodness and mercy will follow you all the days of your life and with long life you're gonna be satisfied. Everything your hand touches is going to prosper. There are so many promises of God and those promises are yes and amen in your life. You've gotta believe it, it doesn't matter what you're seeing with your natural eye. You have to believe by faith. These promises are mine and I promise you the sun is gonna break forth. There's going to be a new day. There's gonna be new mercies. You're gonna see again, live again, love again, breathe again and I truly believe that this is not just a statement but the best is yet to come. Come on Pastor Amy and I believe that even if you're watching right now just as Pastor Kent went into that service during the holidays, during the Christmas, he said it was two days after Christmas, he said it's only gonna be about 40 people and didn't realize this was the moment that things are going to begin to change and I believe even right now you need to mark it on your calendar, April 10th, that this is the moment that God is bringing a shift into my life. He walked in and said the place was completely packed and they started adding 100, he doesn't even understand, he can't even explain. I'm telling you, you are coming into a time of unusual super natural favor. You cannot quit, you cannot throw in the towel, Peter stop washing your nets. It's time to launch out into the deep. What if this is the day? What if this is the moment that your children are coming home? What if this is the day in the hour that your marriage is getting ready to be healed and the business is about to explode, the ministry's about to go to a whole different platform. What if this is your moment? I believe that you're in your time and season and moment right now. You need to lift up your hands right where you are and begin to give God the praise for his pastor, Amy mentioned that your best and your blessed days are yet to come and are on you right now. Just declare right now, this is my now moment. God is turning your sour into joy. Go get them today, your best days begin now. On tomorrow's hope today, are you ready to rise and shine? Prophetic voice and speaker, Mary Shalu helps you to conquer the inner battles of the mind so that you can align your mind with Christ and live out your God given dreams with joy, confidence and purpose. That's tomorrow on hope today. Cornerstone television wishes to thank all our faithful viewers whose consistent prayers and financial support have made this program possible.