Greater Shiloh Missionary Baptist Church

Guest (Male): You are now listening to an inspirational message from Greater Shiloh Missionary Baptist Church, where Dr. Michael W. Wesley Sr. is the pastor. Please join the service in progress.

Dr. Michael W. Wesley Sr.: I want to direct your attention. I’ve waited a whole year to get back to talk to you a little bit more about David. Last time, we talked about David, and I haven’t talked about him since. So, I want to talk a little bit about him tonight. Old Testament book of 1 Samuel, chapter 30. We’re going to read verses one through six in your hearing and hopefully, we can find some encouragement here for ourselves.

And it came to pass, when David and his men were come to Ziklag on the third day, that the Amalekites had invaded the south, and Ziklag, and smitten Ziklag, and burned it with fire; and had taken the women captives, that were therein: they slew not any, either great or small, but carried them away, and went on their way. So, David and his men came to the city, and, behold, it was burned with fire; and their wives, and their sons, and their daughters, were taken captives.

Then David and the people that were with him lifted up their voice and wept, until they had no more power to weep. And David's two wives were taken captives, Ahinoam the Jezreelitess, and Abigail the wife of Nabal the Carmelite. And David was greatly distressed; for the people spake of stoning him, because the soul of all the people was grieved, every man for his sons and for his daughters: but David encouraged himself in the Lord his God. This is the word of God for the people of God.

I want to preach tonight about the God of the bottom. You heard testimonies here tonight. I didn’t orchestrate those testimonies, but those were some people who had been on the bottom. I’ll be honest with you, 2025 has had some days in it when I, too, was on the bottom. I just want you to know that all of us can serve God when we are on the top and when life is going our way and everything is up and moving to the right.

We can stand up in church and say, "Praise the Lord," and we can have that spiritual Miss America hand-wave, and we can have our gospel rock, and we know how to get our praise on because we just left the casino and we won, and life is good. But that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about when you are on the bottom.

I’m grateful that our God is not just the God of the mountain. He is the God of the mountain, and I’ve had a lot of mountaintop experiences, and I thank God for every one of them. I thank Him for being there when I was on the mountain. But when you really come to know God is when you are on the bottom.

I just want to talk to some people here tonight who in 2025 went through some bottom experiences. I want you to know that the good news is you don’t have to stay there. When you’re on the bottom, you don’t have anything to do but look up. What is the bottom about? It’s about discouragement. How many know discouragement is real?

It really is real. If I were to ask you why have you ever been discouraged, why have you lost hope? You heard with your own ears people speak that. While they were just representatives, they were speaking because that is what is in this room tonight. All of us have been there. We’ve gone in the bathroom, we’ve gone in our closet, we’ve gotten alone in our cars, and we’ve had those moments where depression has set in.

We didn’t think we could make it. If you’ve ever been to the doctor and they told you something you didn’t want to hear, and you had to decide, "I don’t know." I’ve said it many times. When I went and I heard what I was told, I left there saying, "Whatever this is, I’m just going to take it to glory with me." But then the God of the bottom met me and said, "No, this ain’t all. I’m not done with you."

I just want to talk to somebody who’s been there. Maybe there are some people here tonight whose family is hurting. There are plenty of people, and it’s not just limited to this room, all over this nation. The jobless rate is down, but unemployment has risen. Why? Because you had a president who was foolish and his buddies, and they went through and they caused people who had secure what they felt were secure jobs in the government.

Maybe you didn’t have one of those jobs, or maybe you lost yours. Finances are real. We’re not all swimming in money. That lady stood and said, "I was out of my house, but the Lord provided a way for me to be able to meet those obligations." Maybe you’ve been watching the news too much. Sometimes I have to turn the TV off because it gets depressing and discouraging.

Especially when I hear our president seems like he’s getting away again with something else that he ought not be getting away with. So, I just want you to understand that discouragement is a common response and it’s a common experience among people. It doesn’t matter whether you’re black or white or Jew or Gentile. It doesn’t matter whether you’re in the king’s court or whether you’re in poverty, whether you live in the projects or not.

They tried to make it be that the only people who were the benefiters of SNAP were Black people. But they showed a graphic on TV today that said Alabama ranked number one in SNAP fraud cases, and the people that they were showing were not people who looked like you.

So, I’m talking about people who know what it’s like to be on the bottom. This stuff is real. In spite of David’s rank and potential rise in popularity, it did not prevent him from experiencing what it was like to be at the bottom. David’s reaction to his own disappointment and the discouragement that he ultimately experienced is what we want to lift out for you tonight because there’s some value here for us.

I want to be clear that there’s a difference between disappointment and discouragement. All of us can be disappointed. Disappointment comes from failed expectations. I was talking to a friend the other day. I said, "Sometimes we don’t even know we have expectations until they are not met." Then when people don’t meet those expectations, then we can become disappointed.

But discouragement is another thing. Discouragement is the spiraling down from a series of disappointments until you get down in the dumps to the place where you now think there is no need and no hope. We can become disappointed when the check doesn’t show up on time. We can become disappointed when somebody doesn’t keep their word.

We can become disappointed when somebody doesn’t remember our birthday or our anniversary or to call us when we have been missing. We can become disappointed. But discouragement, that’s deep. At first, you don’t always want to disclose to people when you have reached the place of discouragement. You can become discouraged when things just have not turned out right.

Let’s look at this man because I want to tell you that God is the God of the bottom. What I like about God being the God of the bottom is that He even there does what is seemingly impossible. I say what seemingly looks impossible. Here David was. The last time we left off last year, David had been a shepherd boy that had come to the camp where the Israelite soldiers were gathered at the behest of his father to carry his brothers some food.

He overheard Goliath talking noise and David decided he wanted to fight Goliath. Goliath laughed at him, and you know what happened. David killed him. He slew him when he knocked him down with those rocks and he took his head off with his own sword. David’s poll numbers jumped. He immediately was a rockstar. Oh man, y'all need to hear this. It's one thing when you rise to the top and everybody knows your name and everybody’s calling on you.

That’s one kind of feeling. There are so many professional athletes, and I have some friends who have played in the professional ranks and they have confided and confessed to me. They say, "You know what? It’s one thing when you’ve been playing ball since you were little and you rolled through high school and college and made it to the pros, and you’re playing in front of 80,000 or 100,000 people in a stadium. Then all of a sudden, you reach that day where you take that uniform off and those same people don’t know you anymore because you’re not wearing that number and that number doesn’t mean anything anymore."

It can mess with people when you rise from being at the top. I’m just trying to help y'all understand that bottom has different levels. So, David was a rockstar. The women went in the street saying, "Saul has slain his thousands, but David his ten thousands." Everywhere David went, people were, "Oh, there’s David." David was popular. David could sing. He was a great musician. He could play the instrument that he played, the harp. He was a gifted poet. He could write. I don’t know how many of these 150 Psalms are really attributed to him, but he had experienced success in every one of these levels, and he was on the top.

But then one day, the Spirit of God took the Spirit of God away from Saul and replaced it with an evil spirit, and jealousy got the best of Saul. Saul turned on David. One day he looked at David and he said to himself just like you’ve heard before, "I can’t stand that guy." I know you can pretend that you never heard anybody say that. Maybe you didn’t hear it, but don’t think that they ain't never said it.

Saul took his javelin, was intending to pin David to the wall, but David had a spin move. A couple of times he got away from Saul. It wouldn’t have been so bad if it was just in the palace. But Saul got possessed to where no matter where David went, Saul was on David’s case. He pursued him. David ran. He went down in the south. He went into Adullam. He went into the caves. Wherever David went, Saul and his men were on him.

For 15 years of dogging his every footstep. David knew that if he slipped one little bit, Saul was going to kill him. You don’t know what that’s like. One Sunday, I was riding in my car right after church down here and ended up in the middle of a shootout. Stopped at a traffic light, and the car right behind me hit my car. Boom, because a car pulled up beside them and was shooting at them.

I didn’t even know my car was hit. I knew it was hit by the car, but I didn’t know it was hit by gunfire until the police came later. But I laid down on the seat. Yeah, I did. You learn to pray when you’re on the bottom. You learn to pray. We had been singing at church, but I was praying in that car.

Then I got out and saw the bullet was headed straight for me, and it was nothing but the hand of God that grabbed that bullet. So, David knew what it was to escape death. Then now he just got to the point he said, "Look, it’s nothing else for me to do. I just need to, the only way I’m going to get away from Saul is I need to go to the Philistines, the enemies of my people, to get away."

He goes to the Philistines and he says to the king of Philistia, Achish, at that time, he said, "Man, listen, I just need somewhere for me and my men." David had 600 choice men that were with him. Achish accepted David. David played crazy. Do you know what it’s like to be on the bottom? David faked like he was losing his mind, spitting on himself, slobbering at the mouth, spittle hanging around in his beard. Has anybody ever got to you like that, that just made you just to the point that you're just at the bottom?

God does the seemingly impossible thing. Seemingly impossible against Goliath, He took him down. Seemingly was going to be caught by Saul, and God gives him a way to escape. Seemingly wasn’t going to be accepted by Israel’s enemy, and God gave him a prominent place and gave him a city that he and his men could stay in, the city of Ziklag. God always does what's seemingly impossible.

I don’t even want to tell you about how many impossible things God has delivered me from. I think each one of you have your own testimony about things that seem impossible. We’ve seen the impossible hand of God. But then what I like about God, too, is that the God of the bottom doesn’t ever leave us in our mess.

Don’t miss that. I didn’t say because of our mess. I said but in our mess. He doesn’t leave us in our mess. Moses said it like this, he said, "Underneath are the everlasting arms of God." No matter how far you might go, you can never go so low that God cannot reach you. He will keep you. He will stay with you in your mess. How many know that you’re here tonight not because you’re so good or because you’ve done everything so right, but God has been with you in your mess?

How many know that 2025 was no different than 2024 or 2023 or 2022 or 2021? You’ve had some mess. You’ve had to deal with messy people. God has had to get you out. I sometimes say to people, something that I learned when I was school principal. When you’re in mess, you can’t defend yourself. Because when you try to defend yourself when you're in mess, you’ll end up involving other people in the mess that didn’t even know it was a mess.

So, you just trust God. God won’t leave you in your mess, no matter how at the bottom of life you may be. Everybody likes a scandal as long as they are not the star of it. But how do you handle that even when you are at the bottom of situations like that? You can be at the bottom because you’ve been sick, because of family stuff, because of enemies pursuing you, because of messiness, because of financial situations. For any number of reasons, but God is always there. He is the God of the bottom.

Look at David now. He’s gotten away from Saul. He’s gotten out of that mess. But then he pretended that he was really there to support the Philistines. So, he would go to the north and raid the Amalekite camp and other people and he would kill all of the people. David was a rough man. He would bring the sheep and all back and bring it to Achish. Achish would say, "Where have you been today?" David said, "I went to the south and I raided some of the villages of Judah." David was lying. God’s man, but lying.

He made Achish think that he had turned against his own people and was bringing the spoils from the villages that he was raiding and giving it to Achish. Then the Philistines were going to go against Israel. David and his 600 men wanted to march against his own nation. But the lords of the Philistines, the leaders of the Philistines, were smart. They said, "No, we can’t let David go to battle with us because David get in battle and his 600 men and they may turn against us. If they turn against us and they’ve been fighting us from within and their troops are coming at us from without, we can lose." So, the lords of the Philistines said, "No, Achish, you got to send David and his men back."

Now, here comes another bottom experience. So, David is hurt because he really wanted to be in that company front. But because he got turned away, rejection hurts. Anybody here ever been rejected? Rejection hurts and rejection will take you to the bottom.

So, it took him and his men three days to get back to Ziklag, to their hometown among the Philistines. When they got back to Ziklag to their village, the village was empty. All of the people were gone, the wives had been taken, their sons and daughters had been kidnapped, the village was burned with fire. They had lost everything. Can I tell you what takes you to the bottom? When you lose it all.

I know what it is to lose it all. I know what it is to have a house fire wipe you out and destroy all your personal goods. It happened one day, five days before Christmas. I was at work and got a call say, "Mike, the house is on fire." All I had was the suit of clothes that I wore that day. But the Lord, the God of the bottom, met me and He carried me through the experience that I didn’t think that I would be able to go through.

Watch this. Not only did he lose it all through the fire, but his family was kidnapped and uprooted. I don’t know what that is like. I pray God that I don't and I pray that I never have to experience that. But there are people, there are people who have loved ones who are missing, and it was right here in this community and throughout the communities of this nation.

Can you imagine what it’s like for some of these people, Hispanic families? They leave and go to work and then they come home and their children don’t come home because ICE has raided the school and has taken their kids away. Or what it’s like for a husband to come home and his wife doesn’t return because ICE has visited the job and has removed her. That’s what’s happening in our world. I lost family through death, and when you lose family, loved ones through death, you can definitely find yourself on the bottom. Or the fear that it’s about to happen can take you to the bottom.

What causes people to feel this bottomness, in addition to these things that I’ve talked about? Let me bring it a little closer to somebody here who thinks that they haven’t had those sensational things. But have you ever tried to please somebody who is just impossible? They’re important people to you, but you can’t please them no matter what. Any woman in here ever tried to cook for a man that just wasn’t happy? I don't care what you put, just too much salt, not enough. "Girl, where you learn to cook at? Grits ain’t right." Or have you ever been a man and you tried to please a woman and gave her your best and everything, and no matter what you did, it just wasn’t enough, good enough? Do you understand what leads to criminal activity?

Divorce is real and it’s come largely out of these kinds of things. Here’s another one. Maybe you’ve been alright with folk, but having to deal with verbal abuse. People talking to you any kind of way. When I was principal of Wenonah, I had a girl, a 15-year-old girl who came to my office with tears in her eyes and she said, "Mr. Wesley, can I talk to you?" I said, "Yes." She said, "You know what? I thought my name was a word that rhymed with witch because every time my mama call me, she call me by that name." You think that stuff doesn't get to people?

Physical abuse. This is the world we live in, y'all. Why you think there is so much tension about the Epstein files? It’s because there is another element called sexual abuse. They got unredacted photographs of very important people who themselves would be ashamed for their pictures and their stories to be told. That’s why they trying to keep that stuff quiet. Sin will find you even when you’re on the bottom.

A lack of proper recognition. This is what gets people in church. This is what causes people to quit church is because they leave your name off or don’t give you the credit for what you do. Church hurt is real, and church hurt causes people to experience the bottom. Having strongholds in your own life. You trying to break out of this habit, you’ve had the habit before the Lord got a hold of you. But when He got a hold of He didn’t stop you from being who you were. He accepted you just the way that you are. Now you can’t help yourself and everybody else wants you to change instantly, but God is willing to be patient with you.

Financial pressures. Not enough money, too much month left, can’t meet the needs that you got. You know what I found out about people? You know what they say about us? They say that we would beg for what we want and we would beg for our needs and we’ll buy what we want. We won't put our needs first, and consequently, we're constantly on the bottom. Adversity, feelings of worthlessness. When you get to the place where you just feel like I ain't no good. I’ve heard kids say that. I’ve heard adults say that. I’ve heard men and women say it, where you feel like other people can help you feel that way, like, "Who you? What good you do? Why you here? You a nuisance, you aggravate me, you don’t matter." All of those kinds of things take people straight to the bottom.

What does all of that bottomness do to people? What does it do to people when they are discouraged? It leaves people divided in their minds. No wonder we had a suicide here. We’ve had brothers and sisters, we’ve seen it, because minds get divided. Don’t you think for one moment that people are making this stuff up when they tell you they don’t know what they doing, pulling their hair out of their head? That was 2025. That don’t have to be 2026. I’m going to give you the solution.

What happens when you’re on the bottom? The same thing that happened to David and his men. We start blaming people. When those men rode back into Ziklag, 600 of David’s men, these men had been with David no matter what. They would go to war. One man put his life on the line because David just said one day, "Boys, if I could just have a sip of the water from the well in Bethlehem." The man broke through enemy lines just to go get David some water from the well of Bethlehem. When he got back, David wouldn’t even drink it. He poured it on the ground. He said, "This man put his lifeblood on the line for me. I’m not even worthy of this." But that day when they got back to Ziklag and their wives were gone and their houses were on fire, they all began to blame David. "David, it’s your fault. You did this. We were trying to follow you and because we were trying to follow you, look at what mess we in." When people start blaming one another, and God knows that will happen in a church.

That leads to anger and depression. This is what happens when we are on the bottom. We become angry with family members. We become angry with one another. We become depressed. We become wanting to go after each other's throat. We go for the jugular and we forget all about this "Praise the Lord" stuff. But God is still there. We lose confidence. We lose confidence in ourselves. We lose confidence in one another, and more importantly, we lose confidence in God. Guess what that leads to? Unwise decisions. That’s when we say, "It ain’t worth it. I give up, I quit, I’ll just gone, I ain’t gonna do this no more."

What happens? We begin to drift spiritually. We begin to move further and further away from God. Do you understand that that’s the number one trick of the enemy? You know why churches are empty, why churches are struggling since the pandemic? It’s because the devil has gotten in this business and he caused people to drift. "Oh, you don’t need to go over there. You don’t need to do that. You don’t need to go to that church, you don’t need to be there. Sit at home, watch TV." As soon as you sit at home you gonna watch TV at church, then the doorbell ring or the telephone ring and you’re out of worship. Or your greens start burning, then that’s church over with now.

So, what do we do? First, we need to know that the God that we serve is the God of the bottom. God has a sovereign stewardship about Himself. He doesn’t waste any experience. Those experiences that you thought were designed to sink you were designed to strengthen you. Children of Israel, they were in Egypt 400 years. The taskmasters got mad with them and he took away the straw and he told them to make brick without straw. He was intending to hurt them, but all it did was cause them to multiply and become a nation much faster. Things that you thought this year were designed to kill you have only led to your strength and your confidence. Scripture teaches that in all things, God works together for good to them that love the Lord. Everything may not be good, may not feel good, may not taste good, but God has a way of working it out for our good.

We got to realize that as we are on this side, just a couple of hours away from the New Year, the sum total of everything that went on this year that was negative was designed to help us be better, not bitter when we come to 2026. He’s the God of the bottom. He’s been there all along. He’s there with us.

So, what do we do? We learn from David. What do we learn from David? We learn that it’s time to go beast mode. Beast mode. Let me teach just two minutes. When you become a Christian, the Bible uses metaphorical language. God through the teaching of Jesus always used animals in His metaphorical language. When Jesus was talking about the religious leaders of His day, He called them a generation of vipers, snakes. It wasn’t that they were snakes, it was just that what snakes do when snakes bite. They put poison in people. It’s not the snake’s mouth on people, it’s what they leave behind when they take their mouth off. When people take their mouth off you, they’ve left that poison behind, and that’s what Jesus was warning His disciples about. Be aware of the doctrine of the Pharisees, of the religious leaders, the poison that they leave behind. Be wise as serpents, but harmless as doves.

When it came to Jesus Himself, He is known as the Lion of Judah, but He’s the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world. So, the Bible is using animal kingdom to help us to see. What you need to understand is that when you become a Christian, when you become born again, born into the family of God, you got a little bit of both. You got a little bit of lamb inside of you and you got a little bit of lion inside. You got to know which one you need more of.

When I was young in administration and leadership, I had too much lamb and didn’t have enough lion. I used to pray, "Lord, you got to give me a little bit more bulldog, a little bit more lion in me to help make these people do." God said, "No, you don’t need more lion. What you need is the integrity to tell the truth, and you can speak to people in love without being so much of a lion." But now, when people hear that they need more lion or beast mode, what they want to do is they want to practice their roar. No, you don’t need to practice your roar because all that's doing is making more noise. What you need to learn to do is learn how to be.

That’s what beast mode is. Beast mode is taking the opportunity to be promoted by doing and becoming who God wants you to be. David is in a mess. He’s on the bottom. His life is in a mess, his friends’ lives are in a mess, everybody is turning on him. In order for David to get up, David has got to go beast mode. The Bible says, "And he encouraged himself in the Lord." He had to get a little bit more lion going inside of him in order to get up from there. He got up from there and he began through prayer to understand that the Amalekites were the ones responsible and all he needed to do was to follow their trail and he’ll find his family again. He began to pursue after them because he’s in beast mode.

Somebody here today, you need to come out of your lambness and you need to get in beast mode in order for 2026 to become all that it needs to be. You’ve been a lamb too long. It’s time now for some lion to come up. Not just the noise of the lion, because just having a lion wasn’t the biggest animal in the jungle. Giraffes are bigger, but giraffes can’t fight. So, you don’t want to just be a giraffe, just big and tall and overlooking things. No, you want to have the beast inside of you. You want to have what God puts inside of you to give you what you need to get up from where you are, to get off of the bottom and to go after what has been taken away from you. If you’re gonna handle the devil, if you’re gonna get back your family, you’re gonna have to fight for that. If you’re gonna get back your possessions, you’re gonna have to fight for that. If you’re gonna get back your integrity, you’re gonna have to fight for that. If you’re gonna get back what God has promised you, you’re gonna have to fight for that. And you’re gonna have to tell Lot, "No, you can’t go." That requires some lion. Because if you’re a lamb, you’ll keep telling Lot, "Come on, Lot. You can go with me a little while longer. It’s gonna be alright." No, you need some lion. You need to go beast mode.

God of the bottom has pulled you off the bottom. He’s shown you why you were there, what you were there for and what the bottom does. But now it’s time to encourage yourself in the Lord. Sometimes you don’t need a preacher always. Sometimes you got to speak to you. Sometimes you got to talk to you. "Mirror, mirror on the wall," that’s talking to you. Sometimes you got to tell yourself, "Boy, you know you’re not doing right. Girl, you know you can do better than that." People ask me, "Do you talk to yourself?" I say, "Yes." They say, "Well, why you talk to yourself?" I say, "Because I’m going to tell me the truth and I’m going to give myself the right opportunity. I’m not going to lie to me." Scripture says, "To thine own self be true."

So, if you’re going to overcome disappointment, you got to go beast mode. That means you got to look within. You got to look within. You got to see what’s wrong and ask yourself, "Why am I discouraged? What’s the real reason I’m on the bottom?" You’ve got to not only look within but you got to look out. Where is this coming from? There's three looks you got to look. You got to look within, you got to look without, and you got to look up. You got to look up because your help is going to come from the Lord. He’s there all along, but we don’t know it. Then we got to look ahead. You got to look at 2026. Just because 2025 has been a time of the bottom doesn’t mean you have to be willing to stay on the bottom in 2026. No matter what it is, God can handle it. God is able to do exceedingly, abundantly, above all that we’re able to ask or think, according to the power that works within us.

You’ve got to have the right response. The wrong response is giving in to it. David could have stayed down there. He could have wallowed in it. He could have said, "Y'all right. Poor me." He could have pitched a pity party, and you know we’re good at that. We send out little black and white invitations and we want other people to come join us at our pity party. That’s not the right response. What I mean "beast mode" is not that you go grab new slingshots and new clubs. But what beast mode is really more about is about being. Being who God wants you to be.

You’ve got to learn how to honor people. This is what I like about David. You’ve got to honor people. First, the honor starts up. You’ve got to honor God. No matter what else has happened, even in my tears, God, I honor You. Even when my heart is broken, God, I’ll worship You, I’ll praise You, I thank You. Even when I don’t know what the next move is going to be, God, I honor You, depending on You to guide me, direct me, show me, help me, please. Honor goes up.

Then honor goes down. There’s no real such thing as honoring down, but what I mean by honoring down, people who you might think are less than. When David got up and David began to pursue and he found the old man and he told him which way the Amalekites went, David honored that man. He didn’t kill him, he didn’t abuse him, he honored him. He was less than. When they gathered the spoils when they do find the Amalekites and they get back their wives and they get all of the spoils back, some of the men said, "Man, we’re going to keep all the stuff for ourselves." David said, "No, we’re going to honor the other men. We’re going to divide it equally and we’re going to share. We’re going to make sure that everybody gets some of the spoils." You’ve got to honor down. You’ve got to honor people who may not deserve it, who may not have been the journey with you, who may have abandoned you somewhere along the way. They still deserve honor because that’s who you are. That’s who God is inside of you. God is always concerned for the least of these.

Then you got to honor all. You got to make sure everybody knows about the God of the bottom who got you up. Who woke you up this morning? Who started you on your way? Who brought you out of the pit? Pitt dwellers. People who have lived in the pit, but God has brought out. You got to tell folk about that God. That’s why I told you earlier, God is a sovereign God. He doesn't waste He's a sovereign steward. He doesn't waste any experiences. So, now that He's brought you through the year, as you go into the New Year, you got to tell somebody. You got to tell somebody about who brought you.

The Sunday after my brother fell asleep. That was on a Saturday night. We had been visiting him, we were there, we were sharing, and the last thing I said to him, I said, "I'm gonna put the broadcast on your TV so in the morning, all you got to do is just look up and it will be there." I got home and before I could even rest, I got a call to come back. When I got there, it was over. But the God of the bottom met me. And He carried me through the experience that I didn't think that I would be able to go through.

Forty years hadn't been all on the mountain. Many times in the valley. You gonna learn to walk on your knees now. When they were little, they used to come in the room, they see me on my knees. And they said, "Mama, what's wrong with Daddy? Why he sleep?" They learned later on that I wasn't sleep, that I was praying. You got to learn how to live on your knees. That's where you fight your battles. You can't pick up sticks every time God show you a snake. God show you snake, He'll show you sneaky people. Not so that you fight with them, but so that you know how to walk. And you even give them honor. You don't got to always let everybody know you know who they are.

So, can you think of a time in your life when discouragement felt like you on the bottom? This year, your own experience. David's story got a happy ending. He got both of his wives back and then he added four more to it. God's revelation is progressive. At the early stages of the revelation, polygamy was practiced. But God always shows the consequence of that problem. So, I wouldn't recommend you do it because it's gonna mean you gonna be on the bottom again.

But what you gonna have to learn to do is learn love God for real. And you gonna have to be a witness. You got to tell people. You got to tell God first, "Thank You." And you got to tell people why you telling God "Thank You." Because He has been good. That is the simple answer. My mother taught me something. She was a well-schooled woman and what she said is, "Look, people don't have to do anything for you. People don't have to say anything nice or kind about you. But when they do, the least you can do is to say 'Thank you'." Has God been good to you this year? Then the least you can do is to tell God, "Thank You." Tell Him, "Thank You." Tell Him every day when you get up, "Thank You." Tell Him "Thank You" when He brings you up from the bottom and He puts you back on the middle or even take you to the top.

2026, somebody is going to get blessed. And we used to sing a song when I was in church that said, "Pass me not, O gentle Savior, hear my humble cry; while on others Thou art calling, please do not pass me by." Don't miss me in the New Year. When somebody's going to be blessed, I want to be in that number. Because I'll be willing to say, "Thank You." And I'm willing to say to all of you, "Thank you." Thank you for loving me. Thank you for supporting me. Thank you for being part of the family that I love and will continue to love and will continue to pray with and pray for because God has brought us together. And what God has joined together, let not man put asunder.

Guest (Male): Hope you enjoyed the broadcast. You have been listening to a message from the Greater Shiloh Missionary Baptist Church, where we are reaching the world for Christ. Located at 2135 Jefferson Avenue Southwest, Birmingham, Alabama, 35211. For a copy of this message, you can reach us at 205-925-9750 or 925-9751, or visit us on the web at www.greatershiloh.org. For another uplifting message, we invite you to join us for our next broadcast.