Rev. Hawke

I already posted my original notes for this sermon. Those notes were exactly as the Holy Ghost gave me the words. The actual sermon, however, was not preached verbatim from my notes. So here is the actual sermon in two parts: the first, an introduction to me with my testimony, and the second, the meat of the sermon about forgiveness.

• Sermon #1 Introduction [audio:sermon-intro-10-28-07.mp3]

• Sermon #1: Forgiveness [audio:sermon-forgiveness-10-28-07.mp3]

Ironically, when the time came for me to preach my first sermon on October 28, 2007, we found out that there was a problem with the video camera, so we had to wait for the camera to be fixed. Nancye, my mother-in-law, asked me and Jo to sing some songs in the interim.

We had no idea what to sing, and many of the songs we ended up singing we had never sung before (and some we had never heard). I even coerced my dad, Ryland, into coming up and singing with us on a few songs. He’s been singing forever, and probably even coined the word song. Really.

Also, while we were singing, which ended up being over an hour, we had no idea we were being recorded. The small digital recorder was sitting on a nearby table; our 14-year-old son, Ryan, found it at the end of the service.

The first song we sang was my grandfather’s (my dad’s dad) favorite song, “A Beautiful Life.” All of my family on my dad’s side either sing or play music or both. Every time we got together, my grandfather requested this song. My dad sang bass and baritone on the song; I sang lead; and Jo sang tenor (though she’d never heard the song before…).

• “A Beautiful Life” [audio:a-beautiful-life.mp3]
  vocals by Kevin and Jo Hawke and Ryland Hawker
  (words and music by William M. Golden, 1918)

The next song, “I, John,” I already posted a partial version of from Jo’s cell phone.

• “I, John” [audio:i-john.mp3]
  vocals by Kevin Hawke
  (words and music by William J. Gaither)

This is one of the songs we’ve all known forever. I can remember singing this song when I was a little kid, back in 1812. I liked this song then, and I like it now. My little munchkin, Lucas, who’s three, sang with us and stole the show. I never realized how high Lukie’s voice is — and how low and country-fied mine is.

• “This Little Light of Mine” [audio:this-little-light-of-mine.mp3]
  vocals by Kevin and Jo Hawke and Lucas!
  (Traditional spiritual)

On “I’ll Fly Away,” I sang lead, my dad sang baritone, and my honeybunch sang tenor.

• “I’ll Fly Away” [audio:ill-fly-away.mp3]
  vocals by Kevin and Jo Hawke and Ryland Hawker
  (words and music by Albert E Brumley, 1929)

I fell in love with this next song, “Peace in the Valley,” when I heard Elvis sing it when I was a kid. I used to get up on the steps in the living room at my Grandma’s house, and I’d bang on the guitar, sing the songs, and pretend I was Elvis. But not to this song…

• “Peace in the Valley” [audio:peace-in-the-valley.mp3]
  vocals by Kevin and Jo Hawke and Ryland Hawker
  (words and music by Thomas A. Dorsey, 1939)

The next three songs were ones that Jo knew from growing up in church.

• “Victory in Jesus” [audio:victory-in-jesus.mp3]
  vocals by Kevin and Jo Hawke and Ryland Hawker
  (words and music by Eugene Monroe Bartlett, 1939)

• “I Love You, Lord”" [audio:i-love-you-lord.mp3]
  vocals by Jo and Kevin Hawke (and others)
  (words and music by Laurie Klein)

• “Allelujah” [audio:allelujah.mp3]
  vocals by Kevin and Jo Hawke, Ryland Hawker, and Nancye Ricketts
  (traditional)

This next song, “Old Rugged Cross,” was my mom’s dad’s favorite song. Jo is singing lead.

• “Old Rugged Cross” [audio:old-rugged-cross.mp3]
  vocals by Jo and Kevin Hawke
  (words and music by George Bennard, 1913)

The first time I heard this song was on the movie, “O, Brother, Where Art Thou?” and Alison Krauss was singing it. Neither of us had ever sung the song before in public.

• “Down to the River to Pray” [audio:down-to-the-river.mp3]
  vocals by Kevin and Jo Hawke
  (traditional)

This is one that I had sung at the Hawker Family Reunions, but Jo had never even heard it.

• “Children, Go Where I Send Thee” [audio:children-go-where-i-send-thee.mp3]
  vocals by Kevin and Jo Hawke
  (traditional spiritual)

And the last song was another Jo knew from growing up in church.

• “More Precious Than Silver” [audio:more-precious-than-silver.mp3]
  vocals by Jo Hawke (and others)
  (words and music by Lynn DeShazo)

We finally got an audio track of the day of my first sermon! (Thanks, Nancye! )

I had tears in my eyes when Jo (Mrs. Hawke) was singing this — and not because it was bad. (I have had tears in my eyes from listening to some people that can’t sing… It’s true. I know it’s not nice, but it’s true.)

This song was actually one of the songs that was scheduled to be sung on that day, October 28th.

• “Amazing Grace” [audio:jo-amazing-grace.mp3]
  vocals by Jo Hawke
  words & music by John Newton (1725-1807)

I really love this song, “Agnus Dei,” by the band Third Day. It just makes me feel good inside. The first time I heard it was on the radio, 91.1 FM out of Roanoke. I didn’t realize Michael W. Smith did it originally until I bought a Third Day CD and a Michael W. Smith CD at the same time, and the song was on both CDs. Smith’s version is awesome, also! (He wrote the song…) If you buy Third Day’s “Chronology” CD, you can see them do the song together, which is really coooool!

The day of my first sermon, my wife, Jo, and I (and my dad, too!) were commissioned to sing songs until the digital camcorder was unloaded, so my sermon could be taped. I think a lot of the music was recorded, but the only thing I have now is part of a song Jo recorded on her cell phone.

• “I, John” [audio:ijohn.mp3]
  vocals by Kevin Hawke
  (words & music by William J. Gaither)

The first time I heard this song, it was Elvis was singing it after a concert in a hotel room, but it’s a very old song. This was the first time I’ve ever sung it in public.

Update: A complete version of this recording is now available here.

Good morning. I said good morning. Let’s praise the Lord this morning. Everybody lift your hands up to the heavens and say hallelujah! Say it loud. Let God know you’re here. If we know what glorious things we have through Christ, we have to be excited. Amen?

All right. Let us pray. Heavenly Father, thank you for allowing us to be here today to worship and praise you. We are here for you today, Lord. We live to praise your holy name forever. Lord, give us the understanding to know your Word and your will and may we all leave here this morning better than we came in. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

I wanted to sort of freely talk to you a little this morning before we get to the sermon. I hope everyone here is saved, and if you’re not, that can be changed today. I can’t tell if you are or not. The only person I can truly know about is me. Amen? I want all the things that the Word of God says are mine. I want salvation; I want good health; I want to be filled with the Holy Ghost; I want to speak in different tongues; I WANT IT ALL!!! Hallelujah!! I said Hallelujah!! Come on, people! I want everything God has for me and you should, too. If you don’t know beyond a shadow of a doubt that you’re saved, then after the sermon, let’s take care of that. If you need healing or to be filled with the Holy Ghost like it says in God’s Holy Written Word in Acts 2:4, then let’s fix that today.

We need to praise God every second of every day, without exception. No matter what I’m doing, I’m praising God. He is to be our number-one priority. In my life, it’s God, my wife, my children, the rest of my family, and then my job. We’re not here to be sucking up oxygen, people. We are here to praise God.

Let me tell you, I was forced to go to church as a child. I went to a United Methodist church where the only time I heard anything about the Holy Ghost was at the end of the Doxology that they sang every Sunday. They never spoke about healing or being filled with the Holy Ghost, or speaking in different tongues. Don’t get me wrong. There were some very sweet people and good people that went there and some very nice pastors whom I really liked, but they had probably never been taught these things. The most excitement you ever see there is someone saying amen every once in a while.

Look! I believe in the Holy Bible. Amen! Well, I was raised that way. When my grandpa died, I turned against God and didn’t believe in anything. I was so smart (HA! HA!) that I had to see it to believe it. God just wasn’t logical. And let’s face it; our logic comes from our minds. You can’t believe in God and worship God from your mind. You have to worship God from your belly or your spirit. In my early twenties, I started studying Wicca, which is a pagan religion. By the time Jo and I got married, I believed in a higher power, but didn’t know what it was.

But let me tell you something, my friends, God had not given up on me and he hasn’t given up on you, either. On our one-year anniversary, we walked into a church in Manhattan. We left the busy, bustling street and walked inside this absolutely beautiful church. When the door shut behind me, I felt a peace that I had never known. This feeling washed over my whole body. I knew then that God had me. My whole life changed that day. Just about all I could think about was learning about God and worshiping God. Several months later, I felt the call to minister, so I became ordained through St. Luke’s in Georgia.

I think for the first time in some time, Satan woke up and started noticing me. See, before, he didn’t have to notice me because he already had me. You are either for God or against God!! Did you hear me? You are either for God or against God. If you are not a follower of God, you are hanging out with Satan. See, Satan wants new converts, too. I was starting to realize the gifts God had given me and was starting to use them. Satan actually made me think that I wasn’t good enough to be a Christian and especially a reverend. I took my cross necklace off because I couldn’t stand it being around my neck. I took my ordination certificate and put it in the drawer and stopped reading the Bible. Whoa! I struggled with this for several months.

One day, in my spirit, I heard, “You can’t run from this.” Then, I realized that whether or not I wore my cross or displayed my certificate, I was still a child of God and a minister of His Word. God said, “You’re still mine.” So I displayed the certificate and put on the cross and nothing can stop me now.

You see, the devil is going to go after some people harder than others. He’s not after the crack head on the street. He’s got him. It makes the devil nervous when someone like me comes along who believes in Jesus and will do everything I can to lead people to him. When you are a soldier in God’s army, you can expect the devil to come after you. But I will resist and he will flee. He’s already been beaten. I just have to remind him sometimes. I’m now enrolled in Rhema’s Correspondence Bible School, and I promise you that there is not a second of any day that I am not worshiping God. And I love to pray in tongues. That gives me a wonderful peace and leads me to an understanding that I’ve never had.

So here we are this morning. What I want to talk to you about today is forgiveness. I know some of you sitting out there today really believe that you are going to receive the promises of God. You believe that you will not go to hell and that you will go to heaven. But let me tell you something. The Bible says that you will not be forgiven if you do not forgive others. And if you’re not forgiven, what does that mean? Well, you can’t go to heaven if you haven’t been forgiven.

This is a serious deal. Just about everyone I encounter will admit to hating someone if they’re honest. We’ve all been wronged before. I’ve talked to people that claim to be spirit-filled, Bible-believing Christians, and then they tell me, I hate so-and-so. Whoa! Back up! Why do you hate them, I ask? Oh, he stole some money from me one time, or he tried to mess up my marriage, or whatever. If you hate someone, you sure haven’t forgiven them.

I have been the same way in the past. I hated this guy so much that I probably would have spit on his cold, dead body. Isn’t that terrible to say? But it’s true. That was before I was made into a new creature by Christ Jesus. Most often, your hatred of someone else doesn’t affect them at all. As a matter of fact, they probably take pleasure in it.

As my wife says, what angers you controls you. That is so true. You won’t hear me admit that she’s right very often. God orders us to forgive for our own sakes. I really thought to myself one time, God wants me to forgive this person, so he won’t have me hating him. No!! God is demanding this for my own sake. Hatred will, without exception, eat you alive. To tell you the truth about it, when you hate someone, Satan himself is controlling you. When you forgive the people that have wronged you, you get rid of a heavy burden on your shoulders. It’s so nice.

People hold grudges forever. Either for something done to them or their son or daughter or other person in their life. People even hold grudges over total misunderstandings that could’ve been solved if they would have just talked about it. You must forgive. You have no choice. If you want to receive all that God has to offer, you must forgive! You must forgive! You must forgive! Before you get totally tired of hearing me talking, let’s look at some Bible verses to illustrate my point.

In Matthew’s gospel, we read in chapter 6, verses 14 and 15:

For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.”

Boy that says it all, doesn’t it? I don’t know how it could be more plain than that. This was part of the greatest sermon ever preached, the Sermon on the Mount. And as we know, that was preached by Jesus Christ himself. These two verses are the words of Jesus. I’d say that’s proof positive that we need to forgive, wouldn’t you? Is there a limit to how much I should forgive someone?

Let’s look at Matthew chapter 18, verse 21. There, Peter asks Jesus,

Lord how oft shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? ‘Til seven times?”

Jesus answers in verse 22:

I say not unto thee, Until seven times: but, Until seventy times seven.”

Hey, that’s 490 times a day that you’re supposed to forgive one person. It would be virtually impossible for them to wrong you that many times in one day. So Jesus is saying in an exaggerated way that there is no limit to how much you are to forgive someone.

Let’s look at Mark 11, verses 25 and 26. Jesus says in verse 25,

And when ye stand praying, forgive, if ye have ought against any: that your Father also which is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses.”

And in verse 26, he continues,

But if ye do not forgive, neither will your Father which is in heaven forgive your trespasses.”

I don’t know about y’all, but I want to be forgiven. I don’t want to suffer what I deserve. Unforgiveness can keep you from being healed; it can keep you from receiving the gifts of God. I want what God has for me. We have to do what God says. Accepting that God commands me to forgive is what enabled me to forgive. My human self didn’t want to forgive. But isn’t it wonderful that we don’t have to do anything alone because God is with us? God doesn’t expect us to do anything without Him.

In Luke chapter 17, verses 3 and 4, we read,

Take heed to yourselves: If thy brother trespass against thee, rebuke him; and if he repeat, forgive him. And if he trespass against thee seven times in a day, and seven times in a day turn again to thee, saying I repent, thou shalt forgive him.”

And, in Paul’s epistle to the Ephesians, which contains Paul’s doctrine concerning the Church of Christ, we read in chapter 4, verse 32,

And be ye kind to one another, tender hearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you.”

In Colossians chapter 3, verse 13, we read,

For bearing one another, and forgiving one another, if any man have a quarrel against any: even as Christ forgave you, so also do ye.”

Let’s look at the Old Testament. Leviticus chapter 19, verse 18, states:

Thou shalt not avenge, nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people, but thou shall love they neighbor as thyself: I am the Lord.”

In closing, I want to say this: God’s willingness to forgive is dependent on our willingness to forgive others. We MUST forgive and walk in love. So I encourage you to examine your hearts and if you have any ill will towards anyone, get rid of it! Pray for them to find God and to be great soldiers for God. Praying for them can help you to forgive them.

Praise God every second of every day.

Pray.

By Rev. Kevin R. Hawke and the Holy Ghost. Written for Sunday, October 28, 2007, at Victory Family Church, 102 Parrish Road, Danville, Virginia 24540 (434-793-4943), pastors Danny and Nancye Ricketts

I wanted to comment on a situation that I was made aware of yesterday. A pastor friend of mine has a terrible temper. He knows it because I’ve talked to him about it. Don’t get me wrong. He is a wonderful person and a soldier for Christ; however, he cannot lead anyone to Christ who is not already heading that way because he becomes too judgmental and condescending.

I’m far from perfect, but I encourage all of the clergy to practice their listening skills. When you’re dealing with a person that has to see the logic in everything and see everything to believe it, you have to use gentle words. I was that kind of person myself. Christianity and faith were not logical to me. Faith goes against our human logic.

Anyway, this pastor keeps his grandson everyday after school. The boy’s father is a self-admitted agnostic. Frankly, this irritates the mess out of my fellow clergyman. This dad does not talk about God to his son because he doesn’t believe. It’s hard for a minister to see his grandson in fellowship with a non-believer. The grandson has never done what he should in school, and nothing has changed this year. I know for a fact that he lies, steals, and is as lazy as he can be. He is fourteen. I know the child very well.

My minister friend tells the dad that if his grandson would have been kept in church all of these years that he would be a better person. I’m not going to argue with that, but the dad didn’t like it at all. The minister was really questioning the dad’s parenting ability. We must also realize that some parents do all the “right” things and their children still go astray. This incident led to a big yelling match and the minister told the dad that maybe he should get someone agnostic to watch his child, and the dad did. So, the minister basically ran his grandson off. He’s going to regret that statement, I think.

I’m gonna do what I can to help. I talked to the dad about an hour and a half last night and told him that anger between him and the grandpa is bad for his son. The dad told me that I was the first person that he had ever discussed religion with and felt at ease about it. Everyone he ever discusses it with gets mad and defensive.

Look, people!! We’re not going to bring the lost to Jesus by getting mad and defensive. We must be compassionate and understanding. We talked about all kinds of world religions. I’ve studied quite a bit about world religions. He asked me questions, and I tried my best to answer them. This dad is very hard-headed like myself. There was a time when I was a non-believer too. So, a lot of the things he says are the same kinds of things that I used to say. Oh, all religions are trying to get to the same place. They’re just going down different paths. Nothing could be further from the truth, but that’s what a lot of people believe. There’s only on God and one way to Heaven.

If I’m able to stay in contact with this dad, I believe he will become a great soldier for God. Compassion is the key. We have to listen to people and try to understand their ideas and feelings in order to help them the way that we are called to do. Don’t be self-righteous. None of us are perfect and we don’t know everything. The more you try to force someone to believe, the more they fight it. We must lead by example and people will follow.

PRAISE JESUS EVERY SECOND OF EVERY DAY!!!!

IHS,
Rev. Kevin R. Hawke

*Originally posted at the First International Church of the Web Bulletin Board

I just had lunch with my mom and dad. I have been concerned about my mother’s health for quite some time now. But, I’ve been even more concerned about her depression. I tried to talk to her the other day about reading the Bible. She told me that she didn’t have time. I told her that I find time to study God’s word even though I work a very serious job and I have a wife and three children at home. It was obviously just an excuse. But, she obviously didn’t want to hear any of this from her son.

I couldn’t give up. I explained to her today that she could never truly be happy unless she knew God and the only way to do that is to know God’s word in her heart. I told her that she needed to accept Jesus as her Lord and Savior. She said that she already had. I believe that.

I’ve always thought that she believed in Jesus. My mom still has a lot of guilt connected to my conception. My conception involved adulterous acts. She went on to marry my dad and to try to do the right things, but she hasn’t forgiven herself. Her first husband’s family never forgave her and it affected her ability to see my older brother. After all these years, she still harbors the guilt and anger that resulted from this situation. I told her that God commands that we forgive others. If we don’t, then He will not forgive us. Forgiving includes forgiving ourselves.

My mom started crying. I could tell that I had really hit on something. See, it’s very hard for a child to get their parents to take instruction from them. Even though I’m grown and I am a reverend, it’s still difficult. I finally broke down one of her walls. I’ve at least sparked her interest.

With God, all things are possible. I told her to praise His holy name every second of every day, and she must forgive. Then, ask the Lord for forgiveness and it will be forgiven and forgotten. I suggest that people surround themselves with God. By this I mean you should listen to Christian music, listen to Bible teaching, post Bible verses all around your house, put a Bible in every room so it is always available, and live every second of your life for Him. I know that neither my mom or anyone else can attain true happiness without God. We must study God’s word and live by it. Thank you Lord for helping me help my mother.

IHS,
Rev. Kevin R. Hawke

*Originally posted at the First International Church of the Web Bulletin Board