Good morning, good morning, good morning, and welcome, welcome, welcome. It's time for our community connection right here on K one, the one you trust. I have a very interesting guest here. Some of you might remember the Reverend Jean HEWITTT. And if you are new to town and you have it, well, I want you to make a friend here because he's the pastor of the Renewed Church in Dewey, Oklahoma. He's also an author, and he's also very much a human being. We're going to find out
just how human we all are. It's got a brand new book. I'm gonna hold it up here for the camera for you to look at. It's called A Bag full of Rattlesnakes. Fastor welcome back, Thank you, sir. It's good to be here, It's good to be anywhere exactly so, a bag full of Rattlesnakes. It's a story of triumph over tragedy, right
right, t us a little bit about it myself. Well, I'm I was born and raised right acrossed over here at Chickasaw on Chickasaw Street, and went into the ministry, and I was at a wife and I pastored in Dewey for several years and we ended up going to Arkansas to pastor. While we were in Arkansas, there was a lot of circumstances took place, and honestly, as you said, very human, I ended up with a moral
failure and committed adultery. I can't put any other way, and it caused my wife and I to be separated and took me out of the ministry for five years. This isn't a woe is Me story. If anybody was really damaged, it was my wife but the worst. But I called a friend my wife and I praised God. God finally put our marriage back together, brought restoration to our marriage. Eventually, five years later, brought restoration to
my ministry and I passed her again. Now, but a friend that lived here in Bartlesville, I was talking to him on the phone, said my wife and I got I told him my wife and I got back together, and he said, trying to be funny, he said, let me ask you a question. Said, if you had your hand and a bag full of angry rattlesnakes, you woke up in the middle of the night that way, and you worked all night to get your hand out of that bag without
getting bit. And he said you finally got your hand out of that bag. He said, why would you stick it back in? And I said, well, first of all, I didn't have my hand in a bag full of angry rattlesnakes. My wife did, and she got her hand bit. So it's not about me sticking my hand back in. It's about her grace and forgiveness and bringing herself to stick her hand back in. But even more than that, it's we as human beings, as you said, Tom, we as human beings. God has his hand in a bag full of
angry rattlesnakes with us every day we are handful. We are a handful. And you know what, the really cool thing about God, the really really awesome thing about God is he never takes his hand out, and he gets bit over and over and over again, but he never quits. He never gets up gives up on us, and he never abandons us. Why do we do that to ourselves? Flesh, a weak flesh, the attack of
the enemy. I think sometimes we have a tendency in the church world to blame Satan when Satan's standing over somewhere going I didn't have anything to do with this, It was your own, Yeah, it was your own weak flesh that did it. So that's where the book came from, and that's where the title came from. I've caught some flak from different corners over the title, but the title describes exactly what went on. And so God, God in pro ask me I'd never written a book before, and God put it
up on my heart to write this. Not. Here's the thing I tell people, this book is not about telling you how bad I was. This book is about telling you how good God is, and we serve a good God. Took you while to figure that out, again, didn't it. It took me a while to figure out that I could serve God back the way I had before, probably even greater, in a greater way. God didn't just restore me, He restored me to better than I was before.
So if you look at this, that's what I want to encourage people. Don't let your fall, your failure, your sin of the past. Don't allow it to keep you down. You know, get back up, come back from the failure, and know that God, just as much as you want to come back from the failure, God wants you to come back from the failure. And you know, the cool thing about God I talk about it in the book is can I read a play for it? I read you a part of the book. It says, this is what I hear
God saying, I see where you are. Now, this doesn't necessarily mean that you've fallen. You could have been wounded by somebody. People all the time are wounded in church. Right. You could have never come to God, and you've never been in that place of relationship. And we use the terms that renews of Christ follower, and we use the term relationship. And I wrote in on page fifty eight, this is what I hear God saying, I see where you are. I see you falling, bloody, hurt,
wounded and damaged. Yes, damaged and wounded by your own actions. I could easily walk away and leave you. I could throw at my hands and say I've had enough. It wouldn't change me one bit. I would still be God. But I don't just want to be God. I want to be your God. And I think that's the key. Wow, that's amazing. Yes. One of the portions of the book was how did they get here? How did I wind up in this mess? Yes? And you know you and I were talking about different ways people just kind of just
wander in. Well. I wasn't looking to cause any trouble. I wasn't looking to hurt myself or anyone around me. It just wow, did you have to really examine how you know? I think part of it is the lies that we believe, whether whether it's I call it the enemy of our soul tells us lies, or our own flesh tells us lies. It's lies. I talk about it in the book Neither of My Thoughts. I preached
this Sunday morning on being defeated by your thoughts. Oh, we do that every day, Yes, And you know I was being I felt lies come in, whether it was myself or the enemy of my soul lying to me your wife doesn't love you anymore, or your wife doesn't care about you anymore. You know, thirty years of ministry at that time, and things are not what they were when you were eighteen and twenty, right, No, never are, yeah, brand, And so every little thing proves those lives
to you and seem to prove those lives to you. And so you hear lie after lie after lie, and before you know it, Adam and Eve enemy came to him in the garden and said, you know, can't you eat this? And they said, we're not allowed. We can eat of every tree, but not this one. And he said, oh, if we eat this, we will surely die. And the enemy says, no,
you won't die. So they really believed a lie the first of all, when he mistranslated what God said and said God said, you can eat of every tree, leaving off the except for the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. They bought into that, and then Eve bought into you won't die. And so we hear these lies, they lead us down the wrong path. And the only way to overcome lies is truth. And the truth that I know is the truth of the Word of God and the truth
of the Holy Spirit. So you know, when we look at this, how did I get there? One of the stories I use is the prodigal son, and I talk about the prodigal son. You know, he wanted to leave his father. He wanted his father's riches, to leave his father's house. And so he was one that was living in his father's house but wanted to leave. He goes out, and the Bible tells us he lived
wildly and spent all of his inheritance. And the next thing he knows he's eating with pigs, which if you're a young Jewish boy, you don't do that. So he's eaten with the hogs. And I think that's where he had to go. How did I get here? All I did was walk away from my father to house. All I did was take my inheritance, and he woke up in that place. Praise God that Luke fifteen says, there came a moment when he came to his senses and said, let me
just go back to my father's house. And so I believe the lies that I believed led to my fall and my own ignorance stupidity, not ignorance, stupidity, and the lies that I believed kept me in a falling condition longer than I should have. The prodigal son could have went home much sooner than what he did. His father was waiting for him the whole time. I came back into a relationship with Christ, got into a deep relationship with Christ
again. But still I believe the lies that I could never pastor again, I could never preach again and lie as you told yourself. Now, I told myself, yes, And I will tell you this. There's a part in the book that talks about not everyone's in your corner, and that's something you got to overcome to come back, because you think, if I come back from a fall, or I come back from a mistake, people know
I used to preach, and now I'm not preaching anymore. And you think everybody's going to jump up and down and cheer you on and be ready for you to preach again. And there's a part in the book where I talk about the twos, the lie of the twos, and that lie says you're too damaged, you're too falling, you're too sinful, You've made too big a mistake, You've fallen too deep. You can never come back. And
the great thing is what we forget is Matthew nineteen twenty six. Jesus says, humanly speaking, it is impossible, but with God, everything is possible. Oh boy, you know, folks, this is a remarkable book and remarkable story and it can be shared by simply picking up this book. A bag full of rattlesnakes, a story of triumph and tragedy and gene faster. You're going to be doing a book sighting and a book release coming up on Saturday, Yes, Saturday, Where are you going to be ten to twelve.
We are going to be at Michael's Carpet and Sleep Center if you don't know where. That's at one of the most populshedly next door to Hobby Lobby, just to the east of Hobby Lobby. We will be set up there. We will have plenty of books available, We will have refreshments and snacks, kind of a celebration time. If you can get a book on Amazon or I've got a couple of hundred of them. If you have one already and you want to bring it by and let me sign it, that would
be terrific. If you don't have one, you want to come by and pick one up and let me sign up. My wife will be signing as well, and we will do that. If you don't want a book and you want to come by and get something cool to drink and maybe grab a cupcake or a cookie or something like that and just say hello, we would love that my goal. Somebody said, Tom, I didn't if you knew the finances. I didn't do this to get rich. I wrote this book
because I want to minister to people. I want people to get a hold of this book. If I was rich, enough, I would have them print as many as ease as I couldn't pass them out. I can't do that, but I would a matter of fact. But here's the thing. I wrote this book to minister to hearts and lives, to minister to people that think I'm too sinful to ever come to God and let them know,
no, you're not. And to minister to people that's had a failure that was in the church, that got hurt, wounded or damage and have left. God wants you back. The prodigal son got close to his home, the father was already standing out there waiting for him, looking for him, and he ran to where he was. God has not left you. You walked away from God. He wants you back. Wow. How powerful is that? And that is the truth. Yes, God wants you back.
Amen, And there is a way back from all of this if you will, Folks that go on to Amazon dot com and you can order the book where you can get it at the book release and signing that'll be at Michael's Carpet and Sleep Center here in Bartlesville. That'll be ten am until noon on Saturday. Of course, Amazon dot com they're open twenty four to seven. I know I got the boxes. They can get them to you quickly. It amazes me. I had friends that had the book before I got it.
That's just so I want to thank you very much and continued success. Reverend Geen Hewitt, thank you, Thank you, sir. The flower lands are expressed and creativity is delivered. Flowerlandflowers dot com, k w o N Burtlesville, K two twenty seven c Q Bartlesville, K two thirty six e t Fahusca