STEVE: …Revelation 21:8, man, you not only know the Lord, you know the scripture. But I am at a place, um, because of what I’ve just passed through. I passed through the Valley of the Shadow of Death. Um, melanoma cancer has no cure. Everyone dies. Now for those of you that are “hyper faith,” whatever you want to be. There’s not a man, woman, or child listening to me around this world or right in this room that has more faith than I do. When one of the top leaders in this nation was dying …pastor of a 20,000 member church.
He died of cancer. His wife called us when his corpse, his body was lying on the bed. She called us, I think 3 or 4 in the morning, and said this “Steve, Jeri, raise him from the dead! I’m laying his phone on his chest. And these were, by the way, hyper faith movement… but they also knew [Steve motions]… he died. So, um, I have just gone through the Valley of the Shadow of Death. My wife bought about a year and a half ago two burial plots. I planned my funeral. I was given a few days to live. And uh… there may be people listening that you’ve been there before, but most people haven’t. Uh, I didn’t know her name. I called my wife, I called her George for a year. I didn’t know where I was.
I couldn’t understand television. I couldn’t stand Christian music. I couldn’t read the Bible. I couldn’t understand anything in the Bible. When I looked at it the words went like this [Steve motions side to side] and it almost made me throw up. I had been on chemo for three years. My wife after we’d go through 9 months of chemo treatments be driving back and forth from Houston and my wife would pull over. I’d puke all over the side of the road. And we’d drive up to the house, turn right around a week or so later, go back, go through the same thing again. Week after week, month after month. And then at the end of all of it the prognosis is it’s worse or there’s no change. And we’d go through another series of chemo, and then another series of chemo. And finally my whole body shut down.
I’m sharing this for a reason. Everything shut down. My kidneys, my liver, my intestines. Everything shut down. I could get morbidly honest with everyone here today but I’m not because many of you would probably get sick at what my wife had to do to keep me alive. Never left my side. For years! In sickness and in health. Remember those words? And I would hear her next to me and I’d be lying in the hospice hospital bed always just a breath away from death. And it’d be 3 o’clock in the morning and she’d be going…[Steve speaks in tongues]. because the Lord had spoken to her and said this: “Take care of the man of God.” Didn’t give her any other instructions. Just take care of the man of God. And taking care of the man of God meant hell on earth.
