From Roman Catholic to Anabaptist: The Story of John Higgins

John Higgins shares his journey from a Roman Catholic upbringing in Baltimore through drugs, alcohol, marriage, Bible reading, mainstream churches, Charity Christian Fellowship, and eventually life among the Amish in Maine. He describes how he and his wife built convictions from Scripture as first-generation seekers, raised a large family, faced church changes and moves, and learned to keep following Christ through confusing or discouraging seasons. A major theme of the message is the need to seek counsel, build personal convictions, leave places well, and refuse to carry offenses.

Key Points:

– John grew up Roman Catholic in Baltimore, knew about God and the Ten Commandments, but later left church and became involved in drinking and drugs.

– After reconnecting with his wife, he began reading the Bible seriously and seeking how to live out Christian convictions in marriage, family, church, and daily life.

– Coming into Anabaptist settings brought blessing, community, and shared convictions, but also required discernment about preferences, convictions, technology, holidays, and church decisions.

– John emphasized that people leaving their roots need instruction, counsel, and convictions built from the Word of God rather than merely reacting against the past.

– He warned against holding offenses, using Joseph as an example of someone who suffered wrong but trusted God’s hand and did not live in bitterness.

– The discussion afterward reinforced the value of seeking counsel with an open heart and dealing honestly with offenses before they damage relationships.

Scripture References: Ten Commandments; leaving father and mother; Joseph’s story; forgiving offenses

Guide me, oh, the great Jehovah, pilgrim through this barren land. Good morning and welcome to Hope for Wondering Amish. This morning we have Brother John Higgins on. And I just want to say that here at Hope for Wondering Amish, we do a presentation first Saturday morning of every month.

Always happy to have people join us. Our hope and desire is to encourage fellow pilgrims on the way through this life to a life of historical faithfulness in Christ Jesus and fruitfulness to the glory of God. So we have John Higgins on. John and I have known each other for a good many years. We have attended the same congregation in several different places.

But never at the same time. We both lived in Maine for a while. And that’s where John was in an Amish church for a while. I’ll let John tell us whatever he has on his heart this morning. So let’s have a word of prayer. And then, John, the time is yours. Gracious Lord God, thank you for this opportunity to, again, share one with another. I pray you bless Brother John as he shares about your faithfulness.

Things you’ve taught him. Guide his thoughts. Guide his tongue. May things work out today, this morning, for your glory, for the edification of the saints, and furthering of your kingdom. We commit this time to you. I pray that each and everyone could be blessed. In Jesus’ name, amen. Go ahead, John. Okay, thank you, Ephraim. Well, I’m coming to you from Liberty, Kentucky.

That’s where I call home right now. And as we go through this, you’ll see I’ve been to a few places in this country. I’ve had my feet in both oceans. One not for very long, but one, the Atlantic Ocean, I’ve been in several different states, for sure.

I guess we’ll start there. I was born in the city of Baltimore. Probably not too many people here can relate to that. And some of, a lot of what I’m going to share here today is, can we say, unrelatable. And a lot of what you guys have been through is unrelatable to me. I don’t know what it’s like to be brought up in a Christian home.

In an Anabaptist home. This is all, this is all new to me. Starting back about 30 years ago. So I had a very good upbringing. I lived in the city. We played in the streets. We climbed trees. Walked. Not very far. Because when you live in the city, getting a little bit too far away from your house. But growing up in the city, you kind of had a,

there was security there. If you can, back when I was growing up there, you weren’t worried about theft. You didn’t lock your front doors. Neighbors came and went. There was security there. I had a nice upbringing. We played in the streets when the cars weren’t coming. Thankfully, I was on a pretty, pretty sharp hill that cars didn’t like driving. So we, we got to play freely there, climb trees.

Climbing trees was that you could see far, you know, and when you were little in the city, you could only see past maybe one house or two and that was it. But if you climbed a tree and got above them roof lines, boy, it was quite the sight to see that there were things out there that you had no idea were out there. Yeah, you’d go for driving a car once in a while, but that was more of a, almost like going to an amusement park when you got to go somewhere in a car.

So I grew up in a Catholic family, eight children, and at the time I was growing up in the 60s and 70s, the large families were starting to disappear. There were a number of us still there and had a lot of friends and having eight children in a home that attracted a lot of children that only had one brother or sister.

And only child, they would come over to the Higgins house for the day just to see what was going to happen and what kind of fun we could have. So I had a nice upbringing, was involved in the Catholic Church, was an altar boy, if anybody knows what that is. Got involved with church operations, and that would be the first time that I was introduced to alcohol.

And if you’re familiar with the mass, the wine is drunk by the priest, and sometimes they didn’t drink it all. And then you also had access to the fridge where they kept it. So that was my introduction into that probably at age, I don’t know, 11, 12 years old, baby. But that didn’t excite me too much. The drugs and alcohol came later as I got older, which affected my life.

Tremendously, mine and my wife’s also. So for lack of time, I’ll just say that at 16, I left the church. That was a time of confirmation. And you were pretty much all set for your life now.

Leaving the Catholic school that I went to and then also leaving the church. Finding other things to do on Sunday morning. My parents weren’t going anymore. And so that kind of dwindled. I was. I knew about God. I didn’t know much about Jesus. That wasn’t taught much. I went to Catholic school through eighth grade. And then I went to public school in high school. Nine to twelve. But I knew there was a God. I knew the Ten Commandments.

God wasn’t happy with me. And that was one of the things that that I’ve heard from numerous people that were Catholic was that God was this big, bad God up in heaven. And he wasn’t happy with a lot of what we did. So that was kind of my foundation as a child. Now we step it up and I’ll skip the skip through here. My adult life, I could hold a job. I drank beer like a fish towards the end.

Back then you had you had numerous things that you could smoke to get high. And there were just let’s just say it wasn’t as dangerous as it is now. I didn’t live in fear of dying. Nowadays, people that do drugs live in fear of dying. They actually carry something in their pocket that in case they are dying, somebody can give them a shot and save their life.

I didn’t I didn’t go through that with drugs. I did go through fear because I was a chicken. I think I think John D was the first one that I heard say, when in doubt, chicken out. And that’s pretty much how I was.

I was in danger where a lot of my friends would stick around and get in trouble and end up either in jail or in the hospital. I did end up in jail a couple of times, but it was very minor and I was let go and pretty much slap on the wrist. But then toward that at the end of that time is when I ran into my wife. She had been born again and I had known her since high school. And now we’re talking about twenty seven.

So I had known her for about ten years and I ran into her in a bar. She was there. She just walked in just to see it was a place where she used to work. And she walked in to see if she knew anybody because she knew anybody or was going to get struck by lightning. And if if you don’t know what getting struck by lightning means, that’s that’s a fear that’s put in you that if you go out from underneath the umbrella, the church umbrella or the

the oversight umbrella, you’re going to get struck by lightning and lose your life and go to hell. So she was just checking to make sure that she wasn’t going to go to hell. She walked into this bar and she didn’t. But she she didn’t go to hell, but she ran into me. And that that started our journey together because she wanted to show me that she wasn’t the same person that I knew in high school who was a pretty bad person. And she’ll tell you right out she was not happy with her life back then.

So anyway, one thing led to another. We ended up going to a church together and we got married. I raised my hand, said a sinner’s prayer, went through the through, you know, the times there that, you know, you get baptized and and do all the things the church tells you to do. And then we got married about six months later. That’s when we started our family.

And we were reading the Bible. We were that that’s when my journey began. I had this Catholic thing back here and I wanted to know more about God. I had wondered what when I was Catholic, what I was missing, because there were so many things there that that were not that didn’t line up with love, the way people treated each other, the way people were dealt with within the church.

So that that that was always in the back of my mind. So going on in life as following a Christian road was was exciting to me. And it was a new life. I was not real happy with my life when I ran into my wife in that bar that day. I was actually in a depressed state, which is not something I don’t think anybody here has ever known me in a depressed state.

Since that time since I started my seeking after God. So we started our life. And here’s where I would like to park it just for a little bit. We did neither one of us. My wife didn’t have any kind of church upbringing like I did. She had pretty much a might have went to a summer camp or something like that or or some kind of vacation Bible school or something.

Real hookup with the church. So we were starting from scratch pretty much. And we dug into that Bible. We were going to church. We were mainstream Christians. And we we dug into the Bible and we wanted to have a nice marriage. We wanted to have a nice family. We thought five children was the was the way to go. And actually, when we were that was a full quiver. We looked at, you know, we took the Bible literally and then we looked.

We looked at some other things and it looks like a full quiver is five. The Bible tells you to have a full quiver. And so that’s what we thought we were going to have. Well, we we ended up having eight. And but we had to look at different things in the Bible. How do we how do we live our lives by what this word of God says? Now, we got teaching. We went to church and we had some Wednesday night things and some some evangelism ideas that the church has had. We went through quite a few churches.

There in Baltimore. But we saw we saw things like. You know, get married, cleave to your wife, leave mother and father. Large family, you know, we’re going to be fruitful and multiply. Well, we were told that that’s not what that meant. You know, you’re reading that wrong. That doesn’t mean have a big family. We were we were discouraged after two. We had a boy and a girl and they said,

that that should do it. You guys aren’t going to be good parents. So just stick with the two and pray for the best. But we didn’t believe that. And other things. Women’s role in church. That hit us pretty hard when we were in a church and found out that the way that the denomination had women pastors. Some reason that didn’t sit right with us. Fathers being in charge.

Has spread out. Not just in mainstream, but just as far as who’s in charge here. Is it the father or is it the church? And I appreciate churches that say that encourage fathers. And I’m in one right now. And I very much like that. But different things like that didn’t sit right with us throughout our mainstream Christianity.

And the Bible and through trying to live it out. And this this is what I would like to share with this with this group and anybody that’s going to hear this. If you know, we didn’t we weren’t brought up with anything, any kind of roots there. I mean, I did have the Catholic roots, but that wasn’t lining up. A whole lot of that wasn’t lining up. So we we were we wanted to start something ourself with our family.

What God says is right. So we had to build convictions. And that’s something that if I could speak to some people who didn’t have to build convictions now, and I know this thing is not going to be balanced in the half an hour or 40 minutes that I have here. But if if the convictions aren’t and I’m not going to be able to tell you how to build them, but there needs to be convictions with you and the word of God.

God’s word has to line up with what you’re doing. And if it doesn’t, when when when something when the rug gets pulled out or something happens in your life and those those, you know, that groundwork has not been laid or or continued. It’s going to it could be some rough going. Many people fall for a good teacher and get sidetracked and.

Speak, you know, speaking about just what this the Wondering Amish title here is at Kingdom Fellowship weekend. I ran across this this past year. I know some of you were there. I ran across many young men and women, young couples who were who were stepping out on their own. They were having to leave father and mother. They were they were making some tough decisions. You know, I had to I had to leave.

Leave my mother, which that didn’t affect her much. It didn’t affect our relationship. We weren’t really. Yeah, that close at that time, although after I got married, became a Christian, we got closer. My wife had to leave father and mother. We had to leave family. We had to make decisions that weren’t that didn’t line up with getting together and having parties and Christmas and, you know, all that kind of stuff that we grew up doing. We had to change all that. And that’s nobody.

Nobody told us that. It was interesting when we came to the to the Anabaptist. We had to deal with it all over again because of so many Anabaptists had their ways of, you know, doing this birthdays and Christmas and holidays and what to celebrate and whatnot. And interesting enough, we had some convictions and preferences, which aren’t as heavy as convictions. But there were certain things that we had to.

Look past in other people and some we didn’t to our fault. That’s another subject that we’ll see if I have any time for. But that is preferences and convictions and and how how how hard do we hold our brothers to our preferences? You know, I was thinking this morning of I had a friend who who was he had a he had a conviction. No talking animals.

I was going to be in his children’s books at home. And that thing was not. To anybody that I would talk to, hey, you don’t want to have some books in your house that have talking animals. Great. Don’t force me to get rid of all my books. And that’s kind of how we can balance convictions and preferences. They’re not all they’re not all the same. So dare I get sidetracked with all that. So the convictions. I would just encourage.

Anybody that is stepping out from their upbringing and all that, be careful. Because you’re not going to get struck by lightning, but it could send you down a wrong path. Be careful. A couple of things you can do. Instruction. Seek instruction. If you have a good friend, if you have a mentor, if you feel like something’s going, should I or shouldn’t I?

Seek some advice. Seek some counsel. I remember that’s something that hit me when the first person came for one of my daughters. The first young man came for one of my daughters. I was not trained in that, on how to deal with that too well. So I made some phone calls. And you might know some of the people that I talked to if I gave their names, but I’m not going to. Let’s just say they’re grayer than I am.

So I just wanted to emphasize that. So we came across the Anabaptist through homeschooling, ended up going to a church called Charity Christian Fellowship there in Lancaster County. And that’s when the real fun began, because now we found people that had some of the same beliefs that we did and held to some of the same things. My wife, before we ever came to Pennsylvania, was considering covering her hair because she would see women in Baltimore,

with head coverings on. I think it was, I don’t know if it was Wesleyan or holiness or what, but some groups there were covering their, the women were covering their heads, which led my wife to the Bible. What are they doing? Where’s this come in? And she read the scriptures and said, wow, this is something that I might need to be doing. So that came pretty easy when we came to Pennsylvania, when we started being Anabaptists. It was a great time. We had 12 very good years there.

In Pennsylvania. And for our children, they were formative years. I didn’t, I’ve heard the word formative years. What does that mean? Well, I didn’t think it meant this, but when I found out what it meant, it’s so true. It’s the, the, the description was from birth to eight years old. Now from birth to eight years old, your children are learning a whole lot. And we were, we were in a good place there in Pennsylvania for that,

that birth to eight years old. Now we had to make some judgment calls on our own because we were, we were with a bunch of people who, who some of them were struggling with leaving and cleaving one, but how to go about dropping what you once knew that wasn’t good, but hanging on to some stuff that was good. That was a challenge for some people. And thank the Lord that we were, we managed to get to, to work our way through all that.

There in Pennsylvania. And I, and yes, it, it, things held together to this day. Unfortunately, some of that has, we’ve seen some friends who, who have had some struggles through life and, and really have come across some rough roads for sure. I don’t know where it’s all going to end up, but yeah, that was a, that was a good time for us. We went to a couple of different churches for one reason or another.

Anyone that we were part of, I could go back tomorrow and be welcome back and maybe even speak at some of them. And that’s something that I’d like to put in here also. When you leave somewhere, if you leave somewhere, make sure you leave on good terms. I was always, let’s just say I didn’t get in trouble for stirring things up. I wasn’t,

I wasn’t a troublemaker. If things got too bad, if I couldn’t hear what was coming from the preacher and couldn’t make things right and couldn’t get it straightened out, it was, yeah, it was a time to go. And sometimes that was a church size. I’d been in churches that had a hundred families. That’s a pretty big church and some pretty big struggles there. So what got us to Maine, see, we were in PA for

12 years and we needed out. It was growing. It was getting too much like Baltimore for our feelings for raising our children. We were limited to the space. My poor neighbor, when he looked out his window, all he saw was dirt. I had one acre and a load of animals. So we didn’t have a whole lot of grass left and I felt bad for him that that was, you know, everybody likes to look out the window at a nice pretty site. Well, it wasn’t so pretty.

So I worked on growing some grass before we left, but we went to Maine as adventurers. One of the things I can remember was people are living there. Why can’t we? I don’t know. Most of you guys are probably in Pennsylvania. Nathan, you might be a little further north, but we went and we we ventured out. We got much 15 acres in a five bedroom house.

We went into this little thing there in Ephrata. So things were looking good. But unfortunately, when we went there, we went to a different level of a charity church. That’s almost 550 miles away from from Lancaster County, where we moved to. Ephraim can tell you it’s a big difference in land and temperatures and winter and people. And this is one of the things that that I look at.

With that move, we were exposed to some of the things that are good to be exposed to. And that and I’m looking at that as the world where the Bible says. Be in the world, but not of the world. Well, well, Lancaster County, unfortunately, is like a bubble. That’s what I refer to to it as. It’s a bubble. You’re living. You’re you’re very secluded. You’re very in there. Everything’s in there. You know, there’s really no reason to go out of it. Kind of like the city.

I don’t want to go too far. So moving to Maine was kind of scary coming from the city, then being there in Lancaster County. And now we’re out in this great big Maine. So we got to know people. It strengthened us. It expanded our worldview, as you would call it. And it was good for our children. They were they were challenged. They grew up. You know, Lancaster was kind of a it was very covered, you know, safe.

Now they were having to see some things and and make decisions with the animals. The animal thing grew and gardening grew and little businesses. I remember my my one daughter had a business called Higgins Solar Signs. And she made these little wooden plaques with a magnifying glass and burned letters into wooden pieces of wood and made signs there for the name Solar Signs.

So anyway, we yeah, getting on to that, we were we were kind of scared away from the church up there. Some of the conservative families left, which which actually one of them left before we even moved there. That was one of the best families that we knew up there. We’re leaving and they they eventually joined the Eastern Church there in Maine. But we were yeah, we were a little frightened away.

Some of the reasons wouldn’t hold water, you know, nine years later, where should I say 12 years later, as is some of the Anabaptist things that churches separate over. You look down the road 10 years and they’re not even issues anymore. Both churches are doing the same thing that they separated over. And at that time it was technology. It was cell phones. So anyway, we’ve spent some time on our own visiting with some friends there in Maine.

That we made little house church. But eventually we joined the Amish. We kept running into these Amish people and and Mel knows a bunch of them. That that were just we liked them. We liked what they were doing. We liked what we heard. We finally visited their church. And after a year and a half, we joined. Got rid of the van. Got the horse and buggy.

Cost more than my van did that I got for my van. And that was some of the issues we had with being Amish was that the things just didn’t line up in that respect. I could take a trip somewhere and how much it cost to take a trip. I could have bought another van and drove it myself. But we had a had a nice time there for a season.

Until things started catching up with us as far as the lifestyle. We had. Yeah, if if anybody wants to go, you know, we got we got people coming out. If anybody wants to go into the Amish, give me a call. We can talk a little bit and maybe run some things by you that you might may not have considered. Although we don’t see much of that.

It’s the Amish are and how that how that way is. But they’re not joining. They’re just talking about it. So it’s a it’s a totally different ballgame when you join. So we we did that and we we were there three. Well, we were there a year and a half checking it out. Nobody was forcing us to join. We were going to church there. We were being a part. I actually had a job there before I joined the church.

Because we were going to be joining the church. They hired me at a store there. So. I guess this is where I would bring in the part about offenses. We as a family and this is where I’m going to try and show you a picture of what my family looks like. Now we went to. Let’s see. This is where I got to go.

Just a second. All right. Is that picture? No, here comes. So we showed up in Pennsylvania and we had five little children. And this is what my family looks like now. If you count them, I think. Can you see the picture there now? I see that. Yes, John. The picture is clear. OK, good. So there’s 11 grandchildren in there. So not not only did my family my I got son-in-laws and daughter-in-laws, but now 11 grandchildren.

And one of them, if you look real close, has got number 12 in her belly. Things have just been going great. I have so much to be thankful for with with how my family is turning, turning out. And but but if and they’re not they’re not perfect by any means. All right. We back. Yes, John. That’s right. OK. Well, I learned something today how to bring a picture up like that.

So. One of the things that my children would say that I need to work on and I would agree with them, and that is about being offended. Now, we’ve all been offended. And some of you who have been Amish. Can really point to some offenses, but I’d like to say the Bible talks a whole lot more about not being offended. That is a personal choice.

Being offended is a personal choice. I’ve chose to be offended. Somebody can hurt you. And you can brush it off. I’ve gone back and apologize to people before. And you know what they said that I thought that I offended and they say, oh, I forgot all about that. I didn’t. Well, brother, don’t worry about it. That’s nice to hear. But personally, I haven’t heard anybody come to me that that that offended me at the time, come back to me and say, sorry,

if I offended you. We’re we’re we’re told not to be easily offended in the Bible and in this world. And we’re all people and we can really use our tongues in a bad way and we can do things. Leadership can do things. When I left the Amish, I was feeling offended because I was being separated. I was being I was going to be an outcast.

In certain ways. Now, it probably was nothing compared to what some Amish have to go through when they leave. And I know there’s different levels of it. But a young man, New Order Amish guy said to me, John, don’t take it personal. He said, this really has nothing to do with you. It’s the way things are. It’s it’s the system. So from then on, I’ve always remembered that.

Take it personal. When I get offended and I look at the situation, it’s really not me. It may be something that I did, but a lot of times it’s not me that that the person is upset with. And this isn’t coming out right, but. Offenses will come. How do we deal with it? You know, when you’re offended, the only person that you if you carry an offense, the only person you hurt is your

self. And we have such nice examples in the Bible and Joseph’s one of them. If anybody had a reason to be offended, it was Joseph for what his brothers did to him. And then what happened to him later with with Potiphar’s wife and just on and on it went. And then we look at the outcome. And I think just the one time it was mentioned when I’m not sure the baker, the cupbearer,

he got out of jail and he thought that he may have been dealt with badly because he didn’t, he was going to get him released too. You know, tell the king that I’m down here or Pharaoh, whoever it was. But he was not, he was not offended. And he went on and he began, we see what happened with him because of that. He kept, you know, he was at the bottom and he came up and he was at the bottom again and he came back up and came up to be second in command there.

But he didn’t go after his brothers. And not only, and this is, this is a really big one. Not only did he forgive his brothers, he told them that what they did to him was not them. It was God. God was doing that to him to get him ready for this day right now. Boom. What’s going on? So if we look at situations in our life that we don’t, we can’t see the outcome.

It’s all going to end up. But we look at is God, what are you saying to me? Where do you want me to go? How do you want me to deal with this situation? We’ll do ourselves a whole lot, a lot of good that way. The, the, the fact that we are being, that we’re getting hurt, we’re bringing that on ourself. Water off a duck’s back. Everybody knows that term.

Guys have an easier time with that than women do, I believe. But we can still be affected. And the longer we’re affected by it, the worse off we’re going to be. So anybody out there that feels like they’ve been offended, yes, you probably have. But you don’t have to sit there. And then sometimes we feel offended when we deserve it.

We need to hear. Wouldn’t that be sad if we’re offended by something that God was trying to tell us in a personal way through somebody else? So we need to be real, real careful with the offenses. So, yeah, I have. It’s interesting how much full circle. There’s not too many people that came from a place where I came from.

I could mention Dean Taylor because there’s some similarities there. And it was right around the same time when I joined the Amish and he joined the Hutterites. We’re in kind of a special group there. Neither one of us are there anymore. He’s gone on to other things and so have I. But through it all, we’ve maintained our walk with the Lord.

Maintained our families and have have are still rejoicing in the Lord and keep we keep moving on. So I just I’m just very thankful to the spot I’m in right now here in Kentucky. I love the weather. Some of you guys got snow on the ground and cold, cold. We’re above freezing, no snow and looking to get sunshine and maybe 40 today. So I’m thrilled with that. So anyway, I appreciate the opportunity to sit here today with you all.

I think I’m I’m through with all that. Brother Ephraim and I’ll hand it over to you. All right. Well, thank you, John. I appreciate you being willing to share this morning here. And I like how you ended with Joseph and how the character that Joseph had. And that’s just so inspiring.

And what all he had suffered and how he saw God’s hand in it all and was willing to stay on track and focus on just doing the right thing, whatever it is, no matter what people were doing to him. The Bible talks about the need to forgive.

If it’s going to happen, that you can choose to be offended or you can choose to forgive and move on and allow God’s grace to use those things to refine you in my life. That’s good. I’m glad to know that you’re pressing on and may that be all of our experiences.

Whatever happens in life, we keep our hands to the plow, keep our minds on the Word of God, and ask God to lead us. It’s about 17 years ago that I started praying in a real earnest way, God lead me in the truth, whatever it is. I really had no idea what God would do, but God heard that prayer.

He moved in marvelous ways. Yeah, again, thank you. I hope that others are inspired and can continue to be encouraged. I want to open it up here. If anyone on the call has anything to say, any questions or comments, I’m just going to open it up right now. Make sure you’re unmuted and speak up. Well, good morning, John. Thank you so much for sharing this morning.

I really appreciate it. Your testimony, your story, and then also some advice you had. The one thought, the one point you said to seek for counsel. That is a really beautiful thing to seek for counsel. And when seeking for counsel, it’s super important that we leave the table open for counsel. I have been in situations already where it was supposed to be a time of seeking counsel.

But the stage was set for no counsel. Meaning that the answers were all given before any counsel. I’m not sure how to say it. But basically, if you can picture, I come to you and I ask you for advice. And then I give you all that advice before you ever give me any advice. And it can be a funny thing. It can be a thing of insecurity on our part.

Think about that. Seek for counsel and leave that door open. And the thing is, I think at times in that insecurity, we think if we are asking for counsel, we actually have to do what the person tells us. We actually have to follow that counsel. That’s not necessarily true that we have to follow everything the person says. But we can learn a lot if we always keep our ears open for counsel, which is a really beautiful thing. So thank you, John. I really appreciate what you shared this morning.

And I hope everybody will be able to unmute themselves. I have a good friend calling in from Kansas on a telephone. I always wonder, I guess I should do an experiment. If somebody calls in from a telephone and I mute them, will they be able to unmute themselves is my question. So I’d love to hear from John from Kansas. That would be wonderful.

Just speak up. Love to hear from you. Yeah, I pushed the button to unmute. I guess I got unmuted, right? Yeah, we can hear you, John. Go ahead. Okay. Well, that’s quite a privilege to be able to hear John Higgins’ testimony here. And I think you could drive a long ways and not hear one just quite like it.

That was very interesting and how God was faithful to him. He was John that had a life of questions himself. It was interesting that John avoided trouble when he was young. And he had such a sweet spirit to help. I know that he helps a lot of other people.

It was just a nice, very nice testimony, John, his experience, how he was taken away from the world and brought to Christ that way. Yeah, thanks. Thank you, John. Yeah, thanks for the encouragement, John. All right. Anyone else? Hey, can you hear me? Yeah, we can. So, John, I just had a question about the Amish up there in Maine. They’re part of the Michigan Circle. Is that right?

Yes. And you had said that they preach English. I’ve heard that being said. Yes, that’s right. Maybe I was just wondering, do you have any more thoughts or would you share a little bit more about that experience up there? Because I was Michigan Circle as well, so just in Montana. Yeah, I don’t know, Atlee. It was a challenge.

It was an experiment, both for me and for them. And I learned a lot there. It’s interesting how much, starting off as Catholic and going all the way to Amish, how much that thing went full circle.

Activities of governing, hierarchy, bishop, minister, deacon, and then whoever’s above a bishop. I never found out who that was, but I know there was somebody there. But just, yeah, it was similar. A lot of similarities there. It’s understandable. But yeah, just on a lighter side, the preaching in English, if it wasn’t for that, we would have never joined.

And then the other thing was indoor plumbing. I mean, I was a plumber for 16 years, and I was not about to give that up. Yeah, and maybe it’s a frivolous thing, but kind of hard to say goodbye to that because we did investigate one group in particular, didn’t have any indoor plumbing. So no, Atlee, we could talk some other time probably about some things if you’re real interested.

Share some things with people that are stepping out, and I know you have. So maybe what we need to do is get you on here one day with your testimony and speak to that point. Well, thanks for sharing anyway. Okay, brother. All right, yeah. Thank you. Go ahead if there’s anyone else. Yeah, I just wanted to comment, John. I really appreciated the message, the testimony. There are two points that I really appreciate.

I think that’s relevant because when you leave a group or if you leave your roots, it’s a time that your anchor is pulled, and it’s really easy to just kind of drift away. So I really appreciated that thought that we need to build convictions and stick with those convictions, especially when we’re not really anchored to any church or a group of brothers

that can direct and guide us. So, and then you had a point there at the end of offenses that I also really appreciated. And I just had a thought to go with that. You mentioned, you know, taking an offense and keeping it. I’ve also, I think my experience would have been that when we take offenses, there’s a large likelihood of conflict to follow. Because when we’re offended,

we usually try to do something back, even though we might not even realize it, but it seems like we might try to do something back and then someone else might get offended. That’s where conflict arises. So I think that offenses, you made the comment that it only hurts us, but I think it actually can go further than that. It’s just a thought I wanted to share. But yeah, I really appreciated that emphasis on what offenses can do. And yeah, really appreciated the testimony.

I’ve met you just a few times, so it’s been very interesting to hear more of the story and the life journey. Okay, Ephraim, I think I want to throw something in here. I had a lot more to share, and this kind of helps bring a little bit more out. You know, seeking counsel, and I would, with the convictions, I would throw in there also seeking counsel with those. You know, we can get one.

We can do something and like, you know, no talking animals. But if we drive that thing home too much, and it’s not going to turn out right for our children, it’s not going to turn out right in church, and yeah, it could really, and I’ll give you, for instance, makeup. I knew a family who really pushed the evils of makeup until the children were at grandmoms one day.

And they said, oh, grandmom’s evil right in front of her because of her makeup. And that family had to, they were, yeah, it was not pretty that grandmom was now evil because she had makeup on. And then other counsel, I would strongly recommend that. And as a for instance here, something that happened to me, I wanted to get a job with Home Depot.

And I didn’t have a job. And I just thought this would be the best thing to do. You can help people there. And, you know, everybody knows you go to Home Depot and there’s nobody to help you. I was going to be there and help people. And brother said, have you ever had a woman boss? And I said, no. And he said, you know, it might not go so well. He said, you married a woman and she’s the main one. And if you end up with a woman boss, who knows what’s going to, that’s going to turn out to be.

And that, just that counsel from Ed, that was it. I did not seek that job. I dropped the whole thing and went on to finding something else to do. So, yeah, counsel is very important. I have been blessed with that over the years and it’s turned out well. Yeah, good. Thank you, John. Anyone else? Hey, brother John. I was, can you hear me? Yeah, we can. Go ahead. Okay. Appreciate your,

your call this morning. I really enjoyed listening to it. And yeah, I remember, still remember your family coming in there to Maine, all of them to church on Sunday morning. And, and yeah, that was back in the middle days, I guess. But I was thinking, I really appreciate the Maine, the English preaching they’ve done. That’s definitely stepping out of the box. My parents are there in Unity, Maine. But I had one question for you on something

else. And that was earlier on you, you said, I made the comment that, that a quiver is five. It’s five. So how do you come up with that one? Just curious. Am I? Yeah. If we have any hunters among us, let’s, let’s hear from a hunter. I think that’s where it comes from. Am I correct there? Anybody that like a hunter goes out with five arrows when he goes hunting?

Well, somebody told John, I never heard five, but I’ve always, I’ve always heard seven, like the, like the native Americans had like seven arrows in their quiver. Okay. Well, I, I’ve also heard that we’re, we’re in a battle and you’re full quivers, however many you can stuff in there when you go out to battle, because you might need them all. But anyway, yeah, somewhere along the way, it was five. Okay. Thank you, brother. I, I just, I was curious where, how you came up with that.

Yeah. All right. Yeah. Thanks for, thanks for being here for me this morning, Mel. And it was nice to see your face pop up there. Yeah. Yeah. It was good. My first time on here and, and I know you well, so. All right. Thank you all for sharing. Don’t want to close it down. If there’s anybody else that would like to say something yet, give you a chance here. Patrick, you still there? I think we might’ve lost him. No, I’m here. You got anything to say, brother? No.

I’m listening. I’m looking for counsel. Yeah. Good to see you, Patrick. All right. Good morning, John. Go ahead. Yeah. It’s good morning, John. It’s been a privilege to, to be able to be here and just listen in. And one comment I would definitely make is on those offenses that they are, they are definitely what takes you down.

I would agree that the comment was made. It hurts. It hurts you definitely, but it also hurts the people around you if you’re not free of those offenses. And I’ve always been, for some reason, I’ve always had that in me to be intentional about, intentional about freeing myself of those offenses.

It’s interesting. Recently, I had somebody, I was seeking counsel, and I had a person tell me that, did you free yourself of offenses? Did you free yourself of kind of your past? Are you ready to move on? And do you feel it’s, yeah, he just asked the question,

and it got my mind to think. I started thinking, and I went, it took me back to the church before the one I left, and it was interesting. It was kind of like a, just another step in growing, in releasing offenses. I actually, I had to, I had to actually deal with the pain again, and just work through it.

And it makes me a different person if I’m struggling with something like that. And I would just definitely agree and encourage anybody to not think back on offenses, just for the, just because you keep thinking back, you know, and you’re just getting angry.

It has to be a work of God, Christ Jesus in your life to be able to look back. And it’s, you know, it’s a sadness that you have. It’s the way it’s for me. It’s a sadness that I have that the relationship went bad, but you’re more focused on yourself. Am I where I’m supposed to be?

Am I in your will? What? Possibly more, you know, you’re not worried about what that person actually did to you. You’re more concerned. Are you? What am I doing? How is my heart? Where am I at? What I was wrestling with, just to clarify, I was wrestling with why was I in so many relational upheavals? And maybe there’s, maybe it’s really wasn’t that many.

I had a lot of relational issues. And I was concerned, why did I have these relational issues? And is there something wrong with me? And I guess I was thankful I was there, actually. I was thankful that I was more concerned about myself than what that person actually did to me or said to me. I was very thankful. And I knew it didn’t come from myself. So definitely thank you for

sharing about offenses. I really appreciated that. All right, good. Thank you, Nathan. Anyone else? Okay, if not, John, would you close us in prayer here? Sure. Okay. Father in heaven, we have you to look to. You have all our answers. The way that we are to live and act and feel. God, thank you for being an example, for sending your son to be the example. The one who was offended the most.

Lord, it’s very humbling to be put, to be made in your image and to be in this world and having you to guide us. God, I just pray that each of us here could look to that every day to look to how you would have us live, how you would have us act.

How we would treat each other and others that we come in contact throughout our time here on this earth. We thank you. God, just lead us. We need you. Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you so much. Bye now. For being a part of our lives and for allowing us to live for you. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen. Amen. All right, everyone. Go with God. Go in peace.

God bless you.