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Well, good morning, and thank you for what a wonderful opportunity it is to be able to share my testimony with you all. I just thought we might just start off in a small prayer, just so the Lord can give me some

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courage and some strength this morning. Heavenly Father, I would like to speak to you this morning, gathered with your people. I pray, Lord, that you would just remove all self from me, Lord, that this is not a

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A story to glorify me, but it is to glorify you, Lord, for the work you've done in my life. So please, while you listen to me this morning, think of the Lord, not think of me. Amen. Okay, some beautiful

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hymns this morning. I think that's encouraged me even more. If you see Pastor waving frantically and saying, stick to the script, you know I've gone rogue, so I'll just try to stick to the script for a bit.

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And I'll see how the Lord leads. So for those who don't know me, I'm Brad Middlebrook. I grew up in a single mother's home with my older brother. We moved countless times growing up from Old Bar, New South Wales to Brisbane, back to New

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South Wales, back to Queensland, back to New South Wales, back to Queensland. Multiple homes, multiple houses. Yeah, it was a bit of a mess. My brother's three years older than me and he was never interested in the things I was interested in.

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And I was always striving for his love and attention from a bigger brother. So my mother left my father on my first birthday due to my father being an alcoholic. So growing up was very difficult as I was very much

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into the typical boy things, pushbikes, motorbikes, skateboarding, surfing, shooting, whatever I could get my hands on, I would be into. So it was difficult because I couldn't share them with my older brother.

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In the things that I was. So, school holidays consisted of going to my father's in Fosterton Curry on his 100 acre bush block. Dad was a very heavy drinker and everything you did and everyone you encountered

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was in association with alcohol. The typical day would be being quiet in the morning until Dad's service from a big night, then trying to get him to do something. After all, it was the school holidays.

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So beach, fishing, parties and lots of drinking was the nature of the school holiday visits. Unfortunately the drinking would be so severe at times it would end in negligence to us kids. Drink driving, passing out at

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strangers parties, being left in vehicles while he did business or speaking to people etc. So at about age 10, my brother's now 13, my brother didn't want a relationship with my father anymore. At 10 I couldn't work out why.

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However, I knew my brother never had had a good relationship with him, and Dad would often compare us two boys against each other. Unfortunately, with me trying to impress my father and my brother wanting nothing to do with

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him, it created resentment between my brother and I. So the next few years were school, moving, struggling to hold friends due to the moving, and school holiday visits to Dad. Only now the visits to my father were by myself.

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I always looked up to my dad, as I believe God has given us an inbuilt respect for our parents, even when they don't seem to deserve it. Dad was strong and could do anything in my eyes, so I just wanted to impress him in anything I could. And Exodus

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20.12 says, honour thy father and thy mother. However, trying to impress my father was impossible, as anything you did, he had done ten times bigger and better. So now, with myself at about thirteen now, after failing to impress my father with

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Motorbikes, sports, skateboarding, etc. Whatever I did which I threw myself into to try and be bigger and better than anybody else. I started to become a lost teen and tried to gain attention from my father in any way I could. I had moved countless

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times, my mother had a few different partners, my friend circle was poor and now we were at Coffs Harbour, New South Wales. I was in a rough school, I had rough friends and unfortunately I was introduced to drugs and drinking at the age of 13.

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The next visit to Dad's was interesting as he was more than happy to share his love for alcohol with me, as this was all he knew how. Back at home, the relationship with Mum was always good. She loved us boys and she

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protected us as best as she could. My relationship between my brother and I was deteriorating as my father and grandfather on my father's side also favoured me over my brother. This was when my brother came out as being gay.

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This was difficult to understand and for me to accept. At thirteen... I'm going rogue here, Pastor. At thirteen, you know, when you get told something like this, you're already in this sort of tumultuous relationship and family

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situation and then you get told that it's just a really hard thing to understand and accept. So school and the bus rides from then on were difficult, as back then gay was not so worldly accepted or popular as it is today.

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So I would get verbally and now physically attacked because now I was associated with a gay brother. I often stood up for him, which didn't help that situation at all. At this same time, my mother had met a man that she to

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this day is married to and he did bring some stability and some male leadership to the home. This is when we moved to Queensland again. School for the next few years in Queensland was stable and I did have some better friends.

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However, in year 11, my mother and now stepfather decided to move onto a farm that my grandmother had bought three hours from where we were living near Rosewood, Queensland. I had a choice to finish school or try and figure out a way to stay in

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Rosewood to complete my senior year, year 12. So I ended up staying with a mate and his parents. So I now had a license, I was within three hours of my parents living with strangers essentially and things, as you can imagine, did not improve.

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I started to seek even more pleasures and comforts of the world. I somehow finished Year 12, somehow, I should have wrote, by the grace of God, I finished Year 12, and then moved on to the now family

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farm in Inglewood of 3,000 acres. There weren't many work opportunities, so I decided to become a shearer. Alcohol was my comfort at this time, and shearers generally don't like alcohol. As I now...

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As I was now three hours from any friends and working full-time, weekends would see me driving back to Brisbane area and the drugs and alcohol was now at its worst. I had been through countless partners and although I did not know the

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Lord, I had a sense of losing who I was and my soul was not happy. I was in self-destruct mode. From age 18 to 20, I was on the trajectory of being lost forever. Every weekend would see me partying with no sleep, fueled by alcohol, drugs.

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Strange places, even stranger people and sometimes waking up not knowing where I was or what I'd even done. Just as I thought I was lost forever, I had one of my mates' father, Uncle Mike is all I knew him as,

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suggest I meet this young girl as he thought she might be a good fit for me. This young girl was indeed a great fit as she is now my wife Jess. Jess is cousins to my mate and Uncle Mike was in fact her Uncle Mike.

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Well, if you think it was all rainbows and sunshine from here on, think again. After meeting Jess and being so terrified of her, to the point I couldn't even look at her or speak a word, which is strange because I can speak with

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a mouthful of concrete underwater once you get to know me, this gorgeous young girl that was very different to any other girl I'd ever met. I thought, well, that's all over before it started. However, after some weeks went by,

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I plucked up some courage to speak with her, on probably an old Nokia brick, I think, over the phone, and we got to know each other over some months. Jess was living in Rosewood and I was living in Inglewood, about three hours away. When I met

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Jess's family, the first thing Jess's mother said to me was, would you consider going to church? As I struggled to answer, she said, do you even know what a church is? I replied with, sure I do. It's a little building with a cross on top, yeah?

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Well, the next Sunday was my first introduction to church. Boy, did I feel out of place. I was swapping out cigarettes, drugs and alcohol for singing, praying and reading the Bible. With my background of a gay brother, no Christian family members and

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no Christian upbringing, I felt I was the black sheep. Unfortunately, this church was not the best for the lost. However, praise the Lord, he started to convict me of some sins. And with the help and support of Jess, I was able to give away the drugs.

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And cigarettes. However, drinking was a really hard one to put aside. Jess and I were under immense pressure at this time from both of our families. My family was saying, you need to leave the crazy Christian people. And my wife's family saying she

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needed to get rid of this lost guy. With the pressure, Jess went up north to a remote cattle station and worked up there for some months. My life took a turn for its worse. I became incredibly depressed and went back to all the worldly comforts.

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I was experiencing demonic attacks along the way. I couldn't sleep and strange things were happening in my rental. I would wake up to all the windows and doors open, dogs let off the chain and in my house and in my bed. Microwave knobs pulled

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off, I didn't even know this could even happen. Unfortunately when I was younger I messed around with the spiritual world so I knew all too well of this darkness. I became so low and lost and I just didn't want to face the world another day.

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I missed my girlfriend, I had no friends or family close, a now limited understanding of a God, but couldn't work out why all these things were happening. Being tormented now spiritually with demonic attacks, I

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thought I can end all of the suffering right now. I won't go into detail due to young ears. However, the Lord had his hand on me that night, as physically and mechanically what should have happened, didn't happen.

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And there is no other way to describe it other than the Lord and a supernatural power to stop something that had never been stopped before. I'm going rogue. I encourage you to take some comfort in the

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Lord, whether you're saved, whether you're not saved. And this came to me after I wrote my testimony, but Psalm 121 verse 7 reads, The Lord shall preserve thee from all evil. He shall preserve thy soul.

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And I won't fast-forward the movie here, but the Lord preserved my soul. So Jess eventually returned from up north, and I had a plan that would fix everything. So we decided to get married. A new life, a new

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beginning. I had got the girl of my dreams, yet something was still missing. We decided in 2011 to move to Bathurst, newlyweds with a new job and a new start. I was 2IC on a mixed farm here in Rockley, Bunamagoo.

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That was when my wife met some strapping young lads on the street in Bathurst, handing out tracts for a little Baptist church called Golden West. With a smile, my wife said, my husband and I will see you on Sunday. To their disbelief, we turned

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up. After our first Sunday at Golden West Baptist Church, for the first time in my life, at 24 years of age, God started to make some sense. A God that desperately wanted me to find Him, more so than I wanted to find what I was searching for.

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After hearing Pastor Ian preaching on salvation, truth, sin, and the simplicity of the gospel, I think it was only the third Sunday of coming to this new church when Pastor was preaching from the book of John, these verses triggered

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my soul to ask the Lord to forgive me of my sins, and for the first time I was comforted in knowing submitting my life to the Lord would save my soul and rescue me from Satan's pit, this world I was now not wanting to be a part of.

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We read from John chapter three, so if you've got your Bibles there, feel free to read along with me. John chapter three, verse three to six. And the Lord's word reads, Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily,

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verily, I say unto thee, except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. Nicodemus saith unto him, How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter the second time into his mother's womb and be born?

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Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.

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And then further down, John 3, verses 12 to 21. If I have told you earthly things, and ye believe not, how shall ye believe if I tell you of heavenly things? And no man hath ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven.

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Even the Son of Man which is in heaven. And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up. That whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son,

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that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved. He that believeth on him is not condemned, but he that believeth not is condemned already.

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Because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men love darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For everyone

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that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved. But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God. Amen.

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After the service, I was so convicted of my sin, I felt as though my whole life was on display for the Lord to see. Every lie, wicked thought, an axe, foul language, you name it, it was all on display for the Lord to see. Of course, the Lord knew this from

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the beginning. However, this was the first time I knew that He knew. I believed in Him wholeheartedly for the very first time, and I wanted His love and His forgiveness. So after the service, Pastor Ian came over to me, in classic Pastor Ian way, and said,

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I am sure he saw the look of terror in my eyes. And I said to Pastor, this is the first time that salvation and sin and the Word all make sense to me. Pastor said to me, do you

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understand now the meaning of salvation? I replied with yes. He said, you know you can be saved right here, right now. I said, well, yes. Then Pastor said, can we pray? And I said yes.

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That was a very special moment for me to have been led by the Lord by Pastor Ian standing in this very church. It was a short plea to the Lord to forgive me and save me from my sins. I knew I was a sinner and I needed God's forgiveness.

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I repented and received the gift of salvation. I wasn't pressured. I wasn't forced. I had found what I was searching for. My wife was standing on the other side of the church and did not see me praying with Pastor. However, when she saw

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Me afterward, she knew instantly I was saved and ran to hug me and rejoice in the Lord. Then my life was perfect. The end. No. Not exactly. Unfortunately, the world consumed my wife and I, and we were pulled away

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from the church and bathysed after a very short time here, about six months, six to twelve months, and wandered the wilderness for twelve years. We were climbing the ladder of the world, chasing status, money.

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What the world could do for us, not what we could do for God. Bible readings and prayer became less and the busyness of life and the world started to take over again. With wife and two kids, Charlotte and Zach, we were in the same

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cycle both Jess and I grew up in. Moving from town to town, place to place, I was in high stress management jobs and Satan knew how to keep me from the Lord's work. Keep him busy, keep him stressed, keep him distracted and confused.

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After countless moves and jobs, I was in Harvey Bay as a general manager for the second time as a general manager, stressed, failing spiritually. From the world's point of view, I had it made, or so everyone kept telling me. We had no church, no Christian

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friends, and no Christian influence. We were lost again. It was then my wife said we should reach out to the Westerns. I ended up speaking with Pastor Ian, and we decided to do a road trip to Bathurst to see the old church family. After returning to Harvey Bay,

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I was spoken to by the Lord all night. Keeping me awake, the Lord was saying over and over, finish your work, finish the job, Luke 11, 23. Finish your work, finish the job, Luke 11, 23. Finish your work, finish the job, Luke 11,

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23. Now, if you think that's annoying, you should have that for 12 hours. So as soon as I could, I opened my Bible as early as I could and read the words, Luke 11, 23. The Lord changed my life with one sentence from the Bible.

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Luke 11.23 reads, He that is not with me is against me, and he that gathereth not with me scattereth. Within days of returning to work, I had a consultant there, and at the end of the day, he

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looked at me and placed his hand on my shoulder and said, Finish the job, will you? I stopped and just stared at him, and I asked him, What did you say? And he said, Finish the job, and walked away.

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I'm sure the Lord used this man as a vessel as he looked as bewildered as I did with the words that came from his mouth. I knew at that very moment the Lord was telling me to quit that job and seek him wholeheartedly. What I didn't

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know was I was going to resign with no job to go to, pack up the house and family, have a removalist book to Bathurst with no address, and that my family and I were about to step out in blind faith for the Lord for the very first time.

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The Lord also placed an immense weight on my heart at this same time to support Jeremy Weston, the young jet that when I was 24 years old knew of as the pastor's kid. Why did I need to support Jeremy? His father was preaching.

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As the senior pastor, he had family in Bathurst, seemed like he had all the support he needed. I prayed about this and the weight got even heavier. Well, after stepping out in faith two years ago, we moved to Bathurst.

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We had come full circle and we were home. After being back only eight weeks, we got the privilege of hearing Pastor Ian, who led me to the Lord, preach two or three times. This is Jeremy Weston's father, for those

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of you who don't know. Then the Lord took Pastor home. I have come to learn that Pastor rejoiced in having the Middlebrooks return to church as much as we rejoiced in coming back to serve the Lord. I now understood.

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Why the Lord put this weight of supporting the new Pastor Weston on my heart. God's timing is truly perfect and the Lord has showed me this perfection countless times in our lives and in others. The way he puts things together can only be done by the true Creator. After

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wandering the wilderness for twelve years, we were able to see Pastor one last time. Fast forward two years and we are still here, praising the Lord for the work he has done in my family's life. I would like to say these verses that have been a huge encouragement to me.

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Matthew 7.7 Ask, and it shall be given you. Seek, and ye shall find. Knock, and it shall be opened unto you. Revelation 3.20 Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If any man hear my voice and

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open the door, I will come into him, and will sup with him, and he with me. Matthew 22.37-39 Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul.

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If you do not know the Lord today, I encourage you to seek Him and the truth. If the Lord can save me, He can definitely save you. We are all sinners, regardless of salvation.

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The difference is knowing you are, and there is an answer to this sin. That answer is the gift of salvation from our Lord Jesus Christ. He died for all humanity's sin.

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And all you need to do is ask for His forgiveness and believe on the Lord Jesus. If you are struggling, in need of answers, comfort, truth, rescuing, Christ is the answer. He will love and comfort

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you more than words can describe. John 14 6 says, Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man cometh unto the Father but by me. Well, I hope this was encouragement to you all.

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May God be glorified through this testimony I've been praying. In closing, I just want to leave with you a final verse that has been a great comfort to me. It's Proverbs 3,

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5-6. Trust in the Lord with all thine heart, and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct thy paths. Thank you very much.