God's Presence in Death: A Testimony of Faith

Pastor David shares his testimony of God's presence in death.

His mom passed away suddenly at home, surrounded by family.

She had been struggling with health issues, including blood pressure problems.

Pastor David reflects on the possible causes of her death, including medication and smoking.

Hello and God bless you. Well today we are introducing a new podcast. I am Pastor David of DLC Ministries and today we are bringing a new podcast. This is episode 1 and our podcast is called Jesus our light in a dark world. That's exactly what this podcast is about. You know, I like for people to share testimonies and stories of what Jesus has done for them. Whether it be your salvation story, or whether it be any testimony of any healings that Jesus has done for you or anything. Anything Jesus has brought you through. We want to hear from you. This is episode number one. I am Pastor David from DLC Ministries. This is my testimony of God showing up in death. And if you listen to my sermons which you can find you can find us on Facebook at facebook.com DLC Ministry with a Y. And one of our sermons is called Down in the Valley of Personal Testimony. That's what we're going to kind of share in depth here today. And it has to do with my mom passing away. And you see when my mom passed away it was sudden. You know she wasn't in the hospital and cleaning the life and we knew it was just a matter of time. She was at home in her bed and one day she didn't wake up. Which in a way was an amazing thing because that's how she always said she wanted to leave this world. She did not want to be in a hospital where she could possibly be alone. She wanted to die at home where she would be have all the comforts of home with family surrounding her. And my dad and I were there. But unfortunately we had no idea. you know she had my mom had had different situations going on in her health the last six months or so before she died and seeing what had happened was she had had she had had blood pressure they diagnosed her with probably last three to five years before she passed away and at one point you know if you've took God blood pressure medicine or you know somebody has sometimes doctors will kind of play around with the doses and what kind of medication that will work best for you oddly enough the medication that worked for her the same type of, the same pill, the same pill name worked for her, my dad, and my brother as well. So she took this she took a couple of pills initially and they ended up making her blood pressure drop really low because they were trying to level it out. Ended up putting her on the one that my dad and my brother take. And it was the weird thing about it was she was taking 10 milligrams just like my dad was and like my brother is but they were giving her 20 milligram tablets that she was having to break in half you know every time she got medicine well she ended up getting you know at the clinic she went to they circulate doctors a lot and you know you get to where you like one and you that's who you want to see but then they circulate and they go on somewhere else and you get somebody new when they got a new doctor there she just asked them if they would give her a 10 milligram tablet instead of having to break 20's in half because we knew that they make a 10 because that's what my dad took and my dad didn't have to break his in two. He got the 10 milligrams like he was prescribed. She was prescribed 10 milligrams but given 20 milligram Tabots. Anyway, when the new doctor came around, this is about December or so before she died. She died in September of 2019. This is about December 2018 or maybe a little after. That's when they claimed that she had her last visit. but They ended up taking her off of it off that pill completely and gave her this new pill and this new pill wasn't Was possibly draw dropping her blood pressure down a lot of guests because she kept Fainting and need or losing her balance But they said but now once she's on this new pill she can't go back to the old one and I have no idea why maybe it would mess up your system. Who knows? So the last almost a year before she passed away, she had a lot of trouble with her balance and feeling lightheaded. Now, I don't know if this was a cause of how she passed away or not. but you see what we ended up finding out later on which was a technical term that I don't know the term right now off the top of my head but basically it was a hardening of the arteries which could either make you have a heart attack or a stroke and smoking is a cause of what can make that would affect that disease that they said was the cause of death that could have possibly been a factor because she was a smoker she loved the Lord she served him for quite a bit of her life when my brother and I or teenagers, she ended up getting burned in the church because they had a guy come in who just didn't care, you know, just didn't like him for some reason or another. So it took her a while to get back in the church, to want to, you know, take that risk again. But in 2015, on Father's Day, she ended up getting back in the church, getting her life back with the Lord. Worshipping the Lord and serving the Lord. All the time. And, you know, whenever she died, like I said, you know, cigarettes was like her. Her struggle. You know, she never came overcame cigarettes. she was trying to overcome them but never did so that could have been a factor or it could have been this medicine that was affecting her blood pressure like I said I have no idea but I know blood pressure issues can cause heart attacks and strokes definitely no strokes because my dad in 2010 ended up having a stroke because he stopped taking his blood pressure medicine. And he ended up having a stroke because of it. And praise God no it was in 2005 I'm sorry. In 2005 he had the stroke. And they tell us the life expectancy of someone who had a stroke was 5 to 10 years. And it's been 15. 16 now it was December December 21st of 2005 but we were in Portland at the time and it was around 10 o'clock in the evening so in Texas time which is where we're at now it was basically December 22nd just barely just about 12 30 30 in in the morning and you know so with that that could be a factor like I said I have no idea what way but you know this was it was a surprise you know it really was I mean we had my mom had had this desire to get life insurance. And it started when they started having health issues around 2010. Because around 2010, pretty much up to 19, it seemed like one or the other was in the hospital. It just seemed like they traded off mom being in the hospital then dad being in the hospital and vice versa. I just kept on trading off and you know whenever they started doing that in 2010 you know my mom had wanted to get a lot insurance but they never did they got some information and things of different things of that sort but never pulled the trigger as to say, you know, filled out any paperwork and got anything started. So as the surprise came, it came, I don't even know when it happened, honestly. I went to bed because it was September 5th of 2019 I went to bed on September 4th I believe I remember her going to the restroom and I remember kind of coming in to check on her because therefore like the last six months she would sleep a lot like 24 hours a day and more So when she had these long spells of sleeping, I had the skills, I guess, to check on her without waking her completely up. My dad, on the other hand, he would go on and check on her and make her where she's wide awake. Then she's mad that she's wide awake because she's woken out of sleep. I had the skill to just wake her up just enough to see if she's okay and let her go back to sleep. And on this night, from what I remember anyway, I remember going there and checking on her. Heard her cough. Said, okay, she's fine. Turned around and went to bed. Got a call about 7 in the morning from my dad. Tell me to come into the bedroom because he can't get mom to wake up. And I thought, you know, because she's taken some pills before that have kind of had her out of it. So that was my assumption. Check for breath. I thought I felt breath, so I wasn't worried about that. I just thought she was out of it and maybe we need to go to the hospital. So we call 911. I go in my bedroom to get dressed out of my pajamas and just some clothes that I can go to hospital with. And as I'm putting my jeans on, the paramedics are in there with my mom and my dad. And I hear them say she's gone. And I just drop the pants. They're like on both my legs. I'm pulling them up. about to fasten them. And I hear she's gone. And I drop and my hand just let go of the pants. And I kind of lean towards their bedroom. Thinking, did I hear what I just thought I heard? So I pull the pants back up. Fasten them. Zip on my pants. Walk in there and kind of hear the end of it. and they said that she had been gone for a while that it happened sometime overnight. My dad had said that he had checked on her an hour or so before then because he was doing laundry and he said that he got her to move over so he could change the sheets. So I don't know. But like I said, this is all sudden had no life insurance you know it wasn't planning we didn't expect anything it wasn't like she was on hospice or anything like that it was just one day she went to bed and then never woke up so we're not knowing what we're going to do one of the first things they ask us what funeral home do we want them to take her to? And there's a couple of major ones here in the town. And I had no idea. I signed up calling somebody from church at the home church that we have and asking them which one they think is better than the other. They didn't have any opinion. They said that they'd had family in both of them both seemed to be pretty good so I ended up going to one that was here in town just to drive up Main Street and seems like it's around nine o'clock when they finally come get her you know because there's a whole place place they're there and different things I don't know exactly exactly what all that entailed. Just know that what's going on and I'm not even really know what's going on honestly. You know it was just because it was a shock factor. So about 9 o'clock or so they, the funeral home comes and gets her. They tell us about 2.30 we can come up there to make arrangements. So we're just sitting there, you know, kind of wondering what to do. First phone call, I make this to my brother. And I tell him, well, I send him a text. And I say, when you have the opportunity, can you give me a call? Because, you know, I mean, he was at work, so I knew he was at work, and I didn't want to just call him then. but I just sent him a text saying whenever you can call me back I ended up sending one to my mom's niece I almost want to say it's her favorite just because of the fact that they kind of grew up together because my mom's older sister who is the mother of the cousin was about at least almost 20 years older, if not 20 years older than my mom. So, maybe 15 years. Anyway, whatever age it was, her daughter was a few years younger than my mom. So they kind of grew up as sisters, even though my mom was her aunt. So since they were so close My next message was for her And once again I sent a text Because she works overnight And I wasn't going to wake her up So anyway we start kind of Telling different people And we're all kind of We're wondering how we're going to pay for this and everything one of the cousins gets this idea to start a GoFundMe and so they start the process on that we go up to the funeral home at 2 o'clock and they tell us that since we don't have life insurance and stuff that the funeral will be about a little over $5,000 and I guess because I don't exactly know why this was happened like this but I guess since she didn't have life insurance I just wanted her out of there as soon as possible I guess I don't know if she could have stayed there longer if we couldn't get it done but September 5th was a Thursday in 2019. They told us that because we're not having the life insurance or whatever we're going to have to have the funeral on Saturday. Now this is two days away. And we, my parents and I in 2012 had moved up into the town where that I'm currently living in now. And because we used to go up to this town whenever we were, whenever my brother and I were younger. It was a town that my dad's mom grew up in and went to school with. And, you know, she used to have class reunions. And we'd come up here and we just kind of fell in love with the town. You know, because it's just kind of a peaceful town. there's not much going on and everything and so we moved up here and we're about a three and a half hour drive away from the rest of the family and so we're telling people yeah you know we're gonna be buried mom in two days and also the Funeral home Like I said they told us that Funeral would cost a little over $5,000 They wanted half of it In two days They wanted $2,500 $2,500 Of Her final bill On the day And My dad and I probably didn't have $200 Between us you know I mean it was already we had already been already paid rent and different things of that sort so the money we had left was just extra money just a little bit extra that we had to you know for the rest of the time the next paycheck so we probably had about a couple hundred between us if that so the next day we go to the cemetery we're told we're going to pick out a plot where we're going to bury mom it was basically the people said here's where she's going to be what no picking out but that's what happened and you know we we went there and picked out the plot and when they had the funeral the following day on Saturday and the reason why I'm telling this and this is why this is called God showed up in death God showed me just how big he is Because My dad has Let's see Five siblings living And my mom had a lot of nieces And stuff from her older sister That were all kind of living in the area And one of the nieces actually lives in Arizona. Now, my mom has a baby sister that unfortunately now is the only one left of her siblings because the aunt of my mom's, my mom's sister that was older that had the daughter that was close to mom's age, she passed away in 2017. And then there was another sister between my mom and my aunt. And she passed away around 2000 or so So out of the six sisters that my aunt had all her sisters are gone and they had no brothers my grandma only had the four kids so she's a so she's all by herself now but anyway so she wasn't able to make it because she lives up there in Washington and I guess she couldn't get away in time or whatever the case may be. Comes the day of the funeral every one of my mom's nieces that I can think of was there. All five of my dad's siblings were there. My brother and his wife and kids were there. I mean it just it was amazing. it was amazing that all these people who clearly had I mean you know in two days time they had to have had something going on that weekend you know grandkids ball games or whatever may be going on but they all came and you know I said that we didn't have any life insurance and they were expecting you know 2,500 of it 2,500 you know by the the day of the funeral they did the GoFundMe thing raised $900 so we use that but not only that people came with money in hand. Not only did they make a three and a half hour drive, they came with money in their hand. When it was all said and done, we gave them about $2,000 to the funeral home that day. And that's all God. I mean that shows how much my mom has loved and how much God loved all of us that he took that burden first he took the burden of you know me and my dad are here in this town far away from the rest of our family and we're dealing with this death, and you would think we were going to be dealing with it alone. But we weren't. We didn't deal with it alone. We had family surrounding us. And not only that, we were told that we needed to pay $2,500 of that bill before they buried her. And they said they still buried her anyway. But we came up with $2,000. That's all gone. Of course we had one of the cousins claimed to be stepping up try to support the family and everything and that proved to be not the case as she just went and made a hard situation even harder you know for me I did not want to sort through my mom's stuff for at least a year I had to do it within two weeks because she wanted to go to this house for, you know, it wasn't a great house. I mean, I'm not going to lie. I mean, it was in bad shape and everything, but at that moment in time, you know, I didn't care because I, you know, you know, it didn't matter that the house was in bad shape at that moment in time because right now we're reeling from everything that just happened. You know, that mom just all of a sudden is gone. Still hadn't come to terms with it. Still didn't understand it. Still kind of don't today, honestly. But, then she... She did a lot of mind games with me. First, talking about how she had to step in because I couldn't because she didn't she pretty much thinks that I failed at taking care of my parents because you know I stayed there and you know try to do the Christian thing and take care of my parents and you know and they were both hoarders and a hoarder you cannot tell them what to do if you ever tried to talk a hoarder into throwing some away. Or doing something with it. It's not a can you please throw this away? Okay. Conversation. It's a this is bad. You need to throw it away. You need to mind your own business type of thing. So, you know, she said that I that I didn't adequately take care of them. And a whole bunch of other stuff. And, you know, basically, basically kind of telling me that I needed to fall down and worship her for what she had done. But all she had, because she, you know, she had done some good stuff for my dad, like got his vision corrected and got him off all the extra medication that I've been trying for several years to get him off of, but no one will listen to me about it. But for some reason they listen to her. You know, whatever. But, you know, it was a good thing. and you know because of the condition of the house you know I guess it was a good thing to get away from it wasn't for me because I'm I'm the only one that cared about my mom's stuff and didn't want to say just on away like she didn't matter but anyway I was pushed to the mental and physical breaking point you know because you're in shock. There's someone there that's been there every day. And now they're not. Then you've got someone coming around telling you that you're worthless and everything because they think that you didn't adequately take care of people like they felt like you should have. So now you've got that whole thing along with everything else you're dealing with. And it's... I mean, if God wasn't there, I wouldn't be here today. And I honestly, truly mean that. You know, there were times where I felt like I was about to hit a mental break. I really felt like if I didn't get out of the situation I was going to go to the mental hospital. And I also felt like all the pressure just the whole sadness and shock that my mom died and all the extra pressure from that cousin and everything I thought pretty hard about suicide. And I would tell God, I just can't do this. It's too hard. And I wanted to check out. But you know, God showed me, gave me the strength to face everything I needed to face. To keep me here. And I ended up telling my dad, you know, we got to get this person out of our lives. Because all she's doing is dragging us down, making a bad situation worse. He didn't see it and I told him, I just laid it down. I said, look, if you don't let her go, then you're going to have to let me go. Because I can't be around it. It's pushing me to the breaking point Thought that that would register But I didn't Signed up leaving I went to stay with my brother Three and a half hours away And Now I'm back where I was In the town where my mom died Got my own place Here by myself and it was scary because for the first 20 years of my adulthood life I took care of my parents and now then after she died I lived with dad for about 6 months then with my brother for 14 months just lived over a year and now I'm out on my own and it was scary and I was telling God why can't I do this you know people typically get out on their own and they do fine but I don't know how I can do it but God stuck with me he stayed with me the entire time now I'm proud of myself that I'm able that I'm able to do it. I'm able to survive and thrive by myself. And that's saying a lot just for my past history that I was talking about. But also just as a person in general in this day and age. Because you can't typically survive alone. Because stuff is too high. luckily I have a place that the rent's not too bad and I'm able to pay all my bills and save up. And I'm just so grateful to God that I'm able to do all this. Because if it wasn't for the Lord I would still be exactly where I was. and you know if it wasn't for the Lord I know I'd be dead but God saw us through He brought people who had to and a lot of them left the same day so that is a seven and a half hour I mean a seven hour dedication just on the road So you thinking about seven hours on the road Three and a half hours to get there. We had the funeral around noon. So they're having to get up early. Travel three and a half hours. We actually had the visitation I think around 10.30 I believe. I mean so that's, like I said, that's a commitment. and a lot of them went home the same day. We had a few that stuck around and spent the night at a hotel and left the next day, but a lot of them left the same day. And not only, every single person gave money in some way. Every single person that came there had in some way or another either had donated to the GoFundMe thing or they had cash in hand or some did both when they came two days later to that funeral. So not only were we not alone to face putting my mom in the ground but we were able to pay a majority of what we were supposed to pay on the day. And then God sent me through some dark times Some dark times when I felt like I was losing my mind. Some dark times when I just wanted to die to get away from it all. And that's how he showed up in death. And I praise God for it. You know, we want to hear your story. You can email us at jesuslighttalk at gmail.com Tell us your story or testimony Of what Jesus has done for you Whether it's your salvation story Whether it's Just something Jesus has done for you Something Jesus has brought you through And what we also want to do Is I want to ask you right now is pray. You know, one reason why I wanted to do this podcast ministry to is to share stories of Jesus because it's Luke 18.8 I believe it is. It talks about Jesus saying when he comes back is he going to have fine faith in the world. And that's what this podcast is about. It's to show the world that when Jesus comes back there's still going to be people here that love him. There's people here that's going to be wanting to serve him and wanting to worship him. And you know there's so much so much going on in the world you know and so much that looks like Jesus isn't around you know like a lot of darkness but there's a lot of the light of Jesus shining in the world you know you think about places where Christianity is not openly welcomed. And here in America, you know, we got some religious freedoms are kind of dwindled down a little bit, but I'm talking about places like North Korea, Afghanistan, places like that where you will be killed for your faith. We're not at that point here in America and I honestly can't imagine it. But there is people coming to Christ and they're risking their lives to serve Jesus because where they're at, they're having to flee so that people don't kill them just because they love Jesus. I just pray that you pray for these people. Because you know these people, these brothers and sisters in Christ, they love Jesus so much that they want to serve him and there's people who are secretly winning people to Christ in these places where if they find out you're a Christian you're going to die but these people are having the faith to say it doesn't matter what they do to me as long as I can tell the world about Jesus. It's so amazing. And I pray that you pray for these people. You know, I'm going to start posting on our Facebook and Twitter pages. And I don't know if I have that on here. Yeah, find us on Facebook and Twitter at JesusLightTalk. It will be facebook.com slash jesuslighttalk and twitter.com slash jesuslighttalk. Both of these you can find us on social media. I'm going to try to share some stories about some people who are persecuted, persecuted Christians, and pray for them. And even if you don't know the name of somebody or whatever, You can look up Anything if you want to Or just pray Just say Lord I just want to pray for My persecuted brothers and sisters Who are in Christ Who are risking their lives To serve you I pray that we answer that call today To pray For our brothers and sisters That they're risking everything. They're risking everything to serve Jesus. I heard a story today. This family, they were Muslim and they ended up, their daughter was sick. And they ended up where, they requested for people to pray for their daughter in the Muslim community. and she didn't get healed and the mom ended up asking these Christians to pray for her and the girl ended up getting healed and the entire family got converted the father was a little hesitant at first because he was loyal to his faith but he couldn't deny what had happened to his daughter so he was saved and at one point in time the knowledge that they were Christians came to and I believe these people were from Iran if I'm not mistaken. They lived in Iran and they found out that they were Christians. So they went and ransacked their house looking for evidence that they were Christians. They had the wife call the husband at work to have him come home. They blindfolded him, took him to put him in jail, interrogated him for hours, trying to get him to tell the names of people that worshiped Jesus with him. He never did. Even with all the different things that they did to torment him. And when they followed him out, they forsake everything. They left Iran and went to Turkey. And they left their friends, their family, their job, their school, everything. And the funny thing is, the awesome thing, is they said that they still feel like they haven't given enough for the price Jesus paid for them. They didn't feel like they hadn't paid enough of a price yet. They feel like what they endured was nothing compared to what Jesus did for them. That's basically what I'm trying to say with that. Amazing testimony. There's people like that all over this world. There's people that are trying to share the gospel, trying to shine the light of Jesus in this dark world. And I just pray that you take the time to pray for these folks. Contact us. Email us. hit us up on a message on Facebook or Twitter. Tell us your testimony. Give us a prayer report so that we can pray. I want to share it on here. If you've got a prayer and you're willing to share it I want to share it with everyone here on the community. We want to share your prayer so that we can get as many people sending those prayers up to God as we can. And you can find this podcast, I believe, on anywhere you listen to your podcasts. You can find it also on Facebook. I mean, on... Well, we might have updated it to Facebook. But also on Twitter. Or, you know, on YouTube. We'll have links on Facebook and Twitter. But we'll also have it on YouTube. We'll also have it on a website called UltimateTube. you can check it out in there as well. And you can download or you can listen to podcasts wherever you get your podcasts. Whether it be Spotify or Google Podcasts, whatever it may be. I believe it's going to be up on all of them. This is our first one, so we're going to see how everything goes with it. But God willing, we're going to do another podcast next Wednesday. And send something in. Let's hear what you got. We want to know what Jesus has done for you. We want to keep sharing Jesus with the world. Keep telling people about Jesus while we're still here. While we still have the opportunity to tell people about Jesus. I want to do it. I want to share with Jesus with as many people as I can. And I want to hear stories from as many people as we can of what Jesus has done. because miracles and God talking and all that they didn't stop with the amen of revelation God's still doing amazing stuff today and I want to hear it that's what I want this podcast to be about is to let people know look what the Lord has done I love you, God bless you I hope you have a great week and I hope to hear your story

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