Doctors Said It Was Impossible… But God Had Other Plans, with David Ebel

In this episode of Living Testimonies, I sit down with David Ebel to hear a remarkable story of perseverance, faith, and transformation.

David’s life began with overwhelming challenges that shaped much of his early years. As he grew older, those struggles led him down a difficult path filled with pain, addiction, and hopelessness. But everything changed when he encountered the life-changing power of Jesus.

What followed was a journey of restoration, purpose, and ministry that would impact thousands of lives. From sharing the love of God with children and families to helping people through crisis and trauma, David’s story is a powerful reminder that God can rewrite any story.

If you’ve ever wondered whether your circumstances are too difficult or your past too broken, this testimony will encourage your heart and remind you that hope is never out of reach.

Because no matter where you start… God can still change the ending.

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Links to Connect with David Ebel:

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Transcript

Israel Caminero 2:19

I'm excited for you to hear this. Joining me today is David Ebel. David, it's truly an honor to have you here. Thank you for being with us.

David Ebel 2:28

Well, thank you. It's a privilege for me to be here.

Israel Caminero 2:32

Amen. Before we step into your testimony, David, I'd love for our listeners to get to know you a bit. Tell us a little bit about David Ebel.

David Ebel 2:41

Well, I'm originally from Detroit. I'm 73 and a half. It's wonderful to be this age because the doctors told me I'd never make it to even even to 20. So uh it's it's a good thing that I'm here. I've been married 51 years, have three kids and nine grandkids, have served faithfully in ministry for 50 years. So when God gave me a second chance, I just dove into it headlong and never wasted an hour. Whatever I could do to bring him glory, I've done it. Which, if it meant 80 hour weeks, then fine, let's do it. Whatever it takes to uh to bring him glory and help people understand how much he loves them, that's what I'm here for.

Israel Caminero 3:21

Amen. And like I said, he has a great testimony. I've heard part of it, but I want him to share it with my audience. But before we do that, as always, I'd like to open up in prayer and say, Heavenly Father, thank you for this day and for every person listening right now. Lord, you know every heart, every struggle, and every question carried by those cleaning. I pray that this conversation would bring encouragement, clarity, and hope. Let this testimony be a reminder of your faithfulness and your power to transform lives. Speak through our time together and let your presence be felt. In Jesus' name, amen. So, David, your story begins in a very unusual and challenging way. Can you take us back to the earliest part of your life and share what you were facing from the very beginning?

David Ebel 4:08

Sure. I I need to actually go beyond before I was born. Okay. Um my mom and dad married when she was 16 as a war bride. She she'd been an orphan since she was six. And the life she lived in the cold towns of Kentucky as an orphan were rough. Really, really rough. So she didn't know what parenting even was. She knew what abuse was, but she didn't know what parenting was. When she had kids, they were the world to her. And when one of her children, her name was Anita, was four years old, beautiful. I've seen pictures, she could have been a calendar model for the beautiful little girl's fashion. She was just pretty in every way. And um she got the stiffles, and they discovered it was polio, and two weeks later she we uh she was dead. And my parents went to the funeral, and the pastor said that the sins of the parents fall on the children, somehow indicating that my the reason my my sister died was because my parents weren't good people. Now there's no Bible for that. That's actually that's that is that that's heresy.

Israel Caminero 5:18

Right.

David Ebel 5:18

And uh the the the denomination fired him for it, but did nothing to restore my parents. And so as a result, my parents pretty much had a grudge against God from then on. So when I was born, I was the makeup baby. And I was choking to death. And she she grabbed the doctor by the shirt and said, Look, you've already lost one. If he dies, you die. He came back about a half an hour later, completely rattled, uh, as I would have been, and um and said, Look, I've got this medical experiment. Well, is he gonna die without it? Well, yes, then do it. So they did the experiment experiment at one day old, and four months later, it became illegal to do it to humans because the side effects were so bad. They include birth defects, sterility, dwarfism, and a hundred percent mortality by twenty. And so um I ended up with twenty-one birth defects in my spine, all the way from the top of my head to my f to my feet. Uh then at ro at age six, I picked up juvenile rheumatoid arthritis. So I've been in chronic pain since then. I was the smallest child in the school and was bullied relentlessly. When the kids, other kids did sports, I could never do it because I wasn't healthy enough. So I read, and I read in, and by the time I was in sixth grade, I had an adult library card because I had read everything in the library in my age group. What it turned into is I had a huge vocabulary. I mean, it was raised with a family with a big vocabulary. So I got beat up over saying the wrong words. First grade, kids stomped me in the foot, bad feet, that's not a good thing. And I turned to him and said, I'd be deeply gratified if you'd remove your extraneous organ from mine for your causing me grievous pain. He looked at me and punched me in the face and held me down, and it was punching me, and the teacher pulled him off and said, What's going on? He cussed at me. Well, word got out, and it you know, life was not easy. It took till 12th grade when I for me to not be the smallest kid in the school. I had I had beat the the odds I was supposed to be less than two foot five, and I grew to five foot four by the time I was an adult, so I'm deeply grateful for that. Uh but my health my health in things increased as I got older. They became more prominent and more obvious. So by the time I was out I graduated high school, uh uh I was 16, started college the next week at 17, did a year and a half of college, I got a full riot scholarship for tuition and books, but I had to work a job to be able to eat, pay gas, and all those things. So I took took 19 credits, 110 lab hours, sound sound engineer of the theater, and sang in the course, which traveled and everything. And I was the sound engineer of the community theater at home. Plus, I worked 30 hours a week. A year and a half in, I finally hit the wall. I could do no more. And I had a nervous breakdown in the student union at the college. They they pulled me in a room and said, Look, son, it's it's okay. It happens. So we're gonna we've arranged to freeze your scholarship for up to five years so you can go home, get well, and come back, and still have your scholarship. What I heard in my depressed state was you can't even do college, you're a loser. I know that's not what they said now, but I I I did not I heard the wrong thing because I was in such a severe depression. I ended up going back to work, and the friends that were there, the people that worked there were not my friends but wanted to be. So they said, You're too serious, let's take you out. So they took me to a bar. My mom is an alcoholic and died one. But in her family, every generation has two or three alcoholics. And so I had promised myself I'd never drink, but to make my friends happy, I drank. Problem was about three months in I could drink most of them under the table because I was already I had alcoholic uh tendencies turning into alcoholism within three months. It it made things worse, it depressed me more. So uh in that case, I I just tried to figure out what I could do with my life and finally decided that the only way to make my pain go away from my my legs and my feet and my back and everything else was suicide. That there was nothing in this world I wanted. This world had been brutal to me, and I I had never found a place where I felt like I was loved or I belonged. I never felt like I was part of something. I spent my whole life trying to be loved, trying to impress people, trying to be popular, trying to be cool. But inside I thought I knew it was just trying. I didn't feel loved or accepted. I felt on the outside always wanting to get in. After four attempts at suicide, by three of them were by overdose and drinking, and God kept me kept me alive while I drove around trying to die. And then the fourth one, I uh got some guys right the day before Christmas, got some guys after work together, bought them a bunch of beer, none of us had eaten, so we drank a whole lot of beer real fast, and we started driving, just you know, enjoy driving. And we ended up on some back rows and there was a bridge. And so I got I floored the car, got it up to a hundred miles an hour, drove it off the bridge, launched it into the river. But because it was Michigan, and it was the day before Christmas, the river had frozen. So when I hit I landed, I hit a big tree about the size around is about a dinner plate, ripped it out by the roots, and slid across the the the what would have been the bottom of the river. Uh everybody got out and scattered, and I went and got someone to call a tow truck. They towed my car out and I drove it home. And all the way home, all I could think of was you're a loser, you're a loser, you can't even kill yourself. What a what a loser you are. So I began the plan. I began the plan to finish it with a finish final one. Now, I was a bit of an artist. Nothing to no one wanted my pictures on their walls, but I I was creative, and in my depressed state, I was I was drawing very evil-looking pictures. One of my part-time jobs to make sure I had enough money for alcohol was that I worked in a a communal, a bunch of other hippie stores in an area where all of them gathered together, so there was 50 stores, all for counterculture. I worked as a candle carver and the candle shop where everybody else was doing these pretty curly candles. I was making skulls that drip blood, and you know, things like that. You lit your candle, and outside of it came this blue, greenish, pus-looking stuff dripping out. And you know, I couldn't, they they couldn't cool fast enough. There was always a line for my work. Uh, there was lots of people who thought it was the coolest thing in the world. And unfortunately, to me, it was expressing how bad I felt. I wasn't doing it for cool. I was given free reign, and I was creating things that reflected how bad I felt inside. I was drawing between carvings on my picture, and this girl comes in and she was cute. She started telling me about Jesus, and I started trying to make excuses why that wouldn't work for me. And so she looked at the picture I was drawing and said, What is that? I said, don't worry about it. She said, No, no, no, you're gonna you're gonna tell me. And she said, What is this? And I said, Well, that's the tree with that with the hands growing into the roots. So the roots look like like gnarled hands going into dirt. The top half of the of the tree had branches that look like gnarled hands holding skulls, dripping blood, evil-looking eyes, uh, just demonic. And around it were gravestones, and every stone had my name and Saturday's date. And she said, Explain that to me. And I said, This world sucks. There's nothing here left for me. The best thing I can do is get out of my pain. So Saturday, uh Friday I buy the I put that last payment on the gun, and Saturday I end this world. So she wanted to help me, but she knew that her three months of Christianity didn't give her the tools. So she insisted I go to church with her the next day. So I went home and told my mom and dad that I was going to church, and my mom just went on the war path. No, no, no, no, no, that's not where you're going. I said, Mom, I've already promised. She said, Well, let me let you know what it's gonna be like. There's cra there are crazy people, they swing from the chandeliers, they roll on the floor, they dance around like chickens. It's you're it's gonna be the scariest thing you've ever seen. And I said, Thanks, Mom, I feel so much better now. She said, Well, when I was a kid, though I went I was forced to go to church, and that's what it was like. And I said, Okay, thank you. So I I went downstairs and I I got all the drugs I had and all the alcohol I had. I got as high as I could and as numb as I could, and I went and picked up the girl. And by the time we got to the church parking lot, it all all the alcohol and drugs hit me and I couldn't put the car in park. It was an automatic transmission and I had to have her put the car in park and turn the car off because I couldn't I couldn't even find the slider or find the keys. She scooped me up, walked me into church. There I was in my counterculture clothes with my the wrong clothes in the long 18-inch fro with no perm that grew it on my hair, my back. And they they these church people went, Oh my, what is that doing in here? And I said, you know, I said to her, I'm in the wrong place. She said, No, they're in the wrong place. Keep them away from our children. We have a witnessing team and a coffee house. That's not supposed to be here where our children are. And I said, Look, I'm in the wrong place. She said, No, we're in the right place. So she walked me over and sat me down in a pew, and I was too inebriated to get up and move. So she got me. I couldn't go any place. So when they started singing, I loved to sing. So I picked up a songbook and found the pages and sang along because I could read music. And I had no idea what I was singing, but I had fun singing. And the young man stood up to preach, not no older than me, but he was the youth pastor, and I found out later it was his last sermon before he was transferred to another church as a pastor, a youth pastor at a bigger church. So uh he was preaching away, and I was just so numb I had no idea what he was saying. It could have been quack, quack, quack, and it wouldn't that would have made as much sense. But toward the end, something happened because my body started shaking. I don't mean a little bit of shaking. I'm talking to the point where these hardwood pews on the hardwood floor start going bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump. And the the late ladies in the back went, shh, he's preaching. And I'm thinking, yeah, like I can stop this. I'm not doing this. This is happening in spite of me. Right. So we said with every eye closed and no one looking around. If you need Jesus, raise your hand. And the girl who brought me heard me say, Do I, don't I? I don't know what I want. But my hand went up. And I when I realized it went up, I thought, oh man, those pe then people are in the back are gonna see that hand to come and jump me. I mean, I'm from Detroit. This is jumping, it's not a not an unusual thing. And I I was pr preparing myself to get beat to pieces. And and finally, uh he I was trying to bring the hand down, it wouldn't go down. He said, Thank you, brother. I see that hand. And the hand went down and I sat on it like I was trying to hatch it, man. It wasn't going up again. And then he finally said, Every eye closed, no one looking. I'm I'm watching, no one looking. If you need Jesus, come forward and I'll pray with you. Well, I looked up, every eye was closed, and the preacher was way behind the pulpit, and the emergency exit was in the front, right where I would go to see him and hang a quick write. In my wobbly condition, I got up and I was heading for the emergency exit. And the guy hopped over the pulpit, six foot four, two hundred and some pounds, and there I am, five foot four and about two hundred pounds, just you know, a mess. And uh he says, Can I show you something? And my answer was sure, just don't hit me. I was convinced that you know, as big as he was, he could show me anything. And he opened up the Bible and showed me, so for whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. And I said, And what is that to me? And he looks me in the eye and says, God knows about your birth defects. He knows about your arthritis and the pain you're in. He knows about the bleeding ulcer, this bleeding out of both ends that you've told no one about. He knows the mount amount of pain you in, and he's he knows he's you've been trying to kill yourself. Now this nobody in that room knew any knew that stuff, not even the girl that brought me. And he's telling me all this stuff that God told him, and it's right on the mark, every bit of it. And I said, So what do I do with all that? He says, There's a small little altar over here. Go kneel and just talk to the Lord. Just pray. Well, on the other side of the of that little altar was two young guys that were were converted hippies, long hair, bib overalls, and they're going, Thank you, Jesus, hallelujah. So I thought, Well, that's how you pray. You scream. So I screamed, Jesus, if you're real, I give you six months to prove yourself. If you're real, I'll give you my life and live with for you forever, for all with all I got. If not, I know where the gun is. And the power of God fell on me and I was sober. For the first time in three years, I was sober as the day I was born. And then as I began to just praise him, what little I knew how to do, all the but my the the ulcer pain was gone. Just gone. And then I felt this urgent need to tell you how how is how sorry I was for everything I'd done. I know the Bible calls it repentance now, but at that point I had no idea. I felt like a balloon ready to break, and someone left the loop the the neck loose, and all of it was coming out right now. So I began to ask God for forgiveness, nine names, dates, places, and it was pretty graphic. And the church family emptied out that chapel so fast you you would have almost felt the vapor lock. And I was just doing it and doing it and doing it, and finally I was empty. I had said everything I could say, and I was just I just rolled over onto the floor on my back, and I was praising him. My 18-inch afro was now a matted mess, like a terrible-looking poodle. And I just was crying and worshiping him, and then all of a all of a sudden I heard this voice, my son David. And I sat up and looked around, and there was no one in the room near me. And I laid back down and the voice said, Son, I love you with an everlasting love. And I've called you to preach my word. I've called you to love my people and then preach my word. If you'll love my people and preach my word, I will change thousands of lives. If you'll love and preach, I'll change hundreds of thousands of lives. Will you love my people? Yes. Will you preach my word if you teach me how? That was it. And those two hippie guys came over and picked me up by the shoulders and said, Hi, I'm Tony and I'm Gary. We're gonna teach you how to live for God. And that began the beginning of it, the most profound change I've ever known. The next day they went down my throat and looked for the ulcer, getting ready for surgery, and they couldn't even find a scar.

Israel Caminero 21:36

Wow.

David Ebel 21:37

And um yeah, yeah, i i th there is God healed some things suddenly.

Israel Caminero 21:42

That's right.

David Ebel 21:43

And over over the years, uh, some of the things that were healed and some of the things he left, you know, Paul had his thorns in the flesh and God left me my thorns. And I don't complain about them. They're just how it is. I'm disabled. I can't do some things. So don't tell me what I can't do. Just tell me what you want done and then I will do it the way I can. And I will do it with all my heart. So um I uh I dressed up as a clown for a kid for a vacation bible school. And while I was waiting to go into the to the room to to give out the bicycles at the end, these kids called called me out to play. When I was a little kid, when you wanted to have a kid come out and to play with you, you went to the door and said, Johnny, Johnny, and that's how you called them out. These kids were at the door going, clown, clown. So I opened the door and they're like, What's going on in there? I see you. You're all excited, lots of kids. I said, Well, come on in. Oh, no, no, no. Our parents said that that's the devil's church, and we can't go there, or the devil will jump all over us. And I said, Well, how about this? Each of you go home to your your home, kneel at your beds, and ask Jesus to become real to you. Ask him to come in your hearts and show you who he is and how much he loves you. Okay. And they ran off like I'd given him $50 bills. And I thought, okay, God used me. And then God spoke to me and said, You love me, love my children. So I took that as a challenge. And not only did I do the clown for that, but I I had a balloon guy teach me balloon animals. A professional clown teach me how to really be a clown. And I went on and on and on until I was performance level. Because I don't I don't believe if you're going to do things for God, you do them left over. I go to churches and they've got leftover couches and stuff that people didn't want in their homes, and now they bring it to God's house. And so when kids come to church, they it they don't see the best. They see the leftovers. They go to they go to Sunday school and they see TV and it's TV, it's amazing quality. They go into movies and it's amazing. They go to the case they go to Sunday school and they have flannel graph where flannel where it's a piece of flannel stuck on a piece of wood, and Jesus and all the other pieces just stick to it. And Jesus keeps falling off while they're telling the story. So the quality level is profoundly different. And I couldn't stand it. I at that point I I came up with the slogan, God didn't send his second cousin Louis to the cross. He sent his best. How dare we offer less? That's right. And that became my mission, my motto. And so I got to the point where I was being scheduled to come to churches and perform. And I wasn't performing, performing. I was preaching in a in a gentle form. And at the end, I always offered a chance to for people to find Jesus. And there was seldom a time when there wasn't two, three, five, ten, twenty people who gave their hearts to the Lord. I can't remember a time when there was never, I don't remember a time in 50 years when I presented Jesus that there was no response. That God just had had given me this gift where I could communicate it with love so well that people wanted it. So over time I I I ended up using that and went on the road. Spent 12 years doing the kids' celebration circus. I would schedule it for a week. I would come in on Sunday morning as me and I would preach. Then Sunday evening I'd preach and then they'd unload everything and I'd set it up for the next day. And I would do evening performances. I would do an hour and a half. And we would laugh and we would have fun and we would do gospel stories. I would do ventriloquism. Then we would have a a I would play some soft music and I would offer I would present Jesus. And I would offer the chance for people to respond. The more I did it, the more the adults in the room gave their hearts to Jesus too. And so I I began to schedule it for kids and families. And if you weren't willing to bring the adults and have the adults as part of the program, I wouldn't come. And it doubled our attendance and it tripled our altar calls. Because uh many adults had been hurt by the church or whatever, and they came for their kids and they they wanted Jesus, but they didn't want the church they'd grown up in. They didn't want that kind of Jesus. They wanted the real one. And when we presented it in a gentle, laughing way, their heart gates opened up. And when we offered Jesus, they gladly received him. And they made promises to God to live for him. I'm still getting Facebook uh messages from people from 45 and 50 years ago whose lives were profoundly changed by one of those nights.

Israel Caminero 26:59

That's good.

David Ebel 27:01

And so we did that for twelve years until my body went on strike, my disability won, and I had to go off the road because I couldn't do it anymore. I'm a Salvation Army officer. So they sent me to a little town, didn't have a salvation army. And they knew that I had learned how to church plant in my early days of Christianity. So they sent me there and said, do something. And uh, well, I did. And through the mercy and blessings of God, in six years we would throw no address to 28,000 square feet of debt-free space, complete with a gymnasium with an Olympic floor, an Olympic gymnasium with an Olympic padded floor, everything first quality, and it was all debt-free. So God did that because I can't hardly keep myself together. So for that to happen, that had to be God.

Israel Caminero 27:55

That's right.

David Ebel 27:55

Because it certainly wasn't me.

Israel Caminero 27:57

Amen. That's right.

David Ebel 27:58

And from there they sent me to another church. This one was had been there a hundred years, but it had gone from running a hundred on Sunday to running eight. And I was told that you can't hurt the ones that are there, but around it, you need to restart again. So that's what I did. I spent the next six years restarting that church, rebuilding it. I found out what the needs of the church were, found out what the community needed us to be, which was disaster responders. And so I learned all got all the training I could and became a local expert on disaster response. And out of that won the town's heart heart and did some miraculous things. When the tsunami hit, we raised a half a million dollars in that town. And we'd never raised 10,000 for out of the community. We got a half a million to send to the tsunami. That's good. Then when Texas got wiped out with its big storm, we raised a million dollars and filled an 18-wheeler full of supplies. And because we done we had loved that town and the town had learned to love us back, the fire department took it as their mission. And they they got licensed siren escort for the supplies all the way from Bakersfield, California, all the way to the stadium that had been converted into a shelter, so that every single thing that was donated was immediately used in loving people. That's impossible. That town had never ever dreamed of doing something like that. But somehow, by loving the town, loving the people, sharing Jesus, winning lives, and finding out what the needs were, and loving the town enough to find out how to how I could meet those needs and doing it, miracles happened. That's right. So then they sent us to another place and another place, and and great things happened. And uh that was the that's how the continuation of my my life was. We were ever we were sent, we found out what the needs were, and we Paul was all things to all, that he might win some. That's a paraphrase, but that's what he said. So I I made it my mission to go to a town and learn who they were, learn what their needs were, and become become all things to all. So if that meant I had to be a part of this or join that or be a supporting member of this, I did that so that I would the town would know that I was there to love them. I didn't come just to talk at them. I came to be part of them. And every place we went, we had lives changed, we had finances re-rebuilt, we had visions developed, and and great things happened, not because of me, but because God gave me the love to love people and the passion to get in there and just do it do a hundred percent, not half, not compromise, not not take my not take it off at six o'clock. I never did nine to five. I did eyes open until probably midnight, two in the morning, every day, because that's what it take would take to meet those needs. And miracle after miracle happened. And then after 50 years, my leadership retired me because my body just wouldn't wouldn't do it anymore. So uh in retirement, I I started taking pictures. God had spoken to me that uh I should be taking these, so I got I started taking them and I got good at it. Um remarkably good. And I started winning international awards. So uh I even have a website with with the pictures if your listeners want to look. Yeah, it's my name, David David W. Ebel.com. And they can see some some beautiful pictures, most of them award winners. And uh there's even a folder full of pictures from Israel, from the Holy Land. For those that are passionate about that, when we were there, I took a lot of pictures, and the best of them are uh are there available just to enjoy. You know, if someone is interested in buying pictures, call my phone number and and we'll we'll work that out for you. I've got them on canvas and metal and all kinds of beautiful stuff. It's just another ministry for me. It's another way to love people. And then now I began doing podcasts because that's another way to share God's love.

Israel Caminero 32:32

Amen. Amen. That was a lot. Those early experiences had mentally up, right? So why do you believe joy and laughter can play such a powerful role in everyone's feelings, especially you know, you being that you were doing that?

David Ebel 33:54

Well, scripture talks about the joy of the Lord as our strength.

Israel Caminero 33:57

That's right.

David Ebel 33:58

And there is there's other scriptures, if you if you get in there and look, there's plenty of scriptures about joy, and there is some, there's a few that that indicate laughter. Uh the key is that we as a culture, we have no longer have open hearts. We protect ourselves from what people can say to us, what's going to happen. Unless you know someone intimately, they don't know you really deep. They just know a little bit about you. Right, we're we we we wall it off so we don't get hurt. And if we've gone to church and it either didn't work for us, or we we uh like the church I I went I visited once with a little old when I was a kid, that the little old lady said, What is it? What are you doing here? Where's your parents? Your parents didn't count, you shouldn't be here. That was my my only time visiting a church. So, you know, I I had no reason to want to go to church.

Israel Caminero 34:54

Right.

David Ebel 34:55

So, you know, matter of fact, when I I came home from giving up giving getting saved, I went and said, Mom and dad, I got the greatest news in the world. Let me tell you all about it. I gave my heart to Jesus, he forgave me for my sins, and he and he healed my stomach, and he's called me to preach, and my mom looked at me and said, I liked you better as a drunk. Wow. So you know, even when you give your heart to God, that doesn't mean you're not going to have challenges.

Israel Caminero 35:23

Oh, of course.

David Ebel 35:24

It just means you're not alone with your challenges.

Israel Caminero 35:26

That's right.

David Ebel 35:27

Jesus says He never He'll never leave you or forsake you, He'll be with you always. But what I what I learned is laughter is is something that breaks down walls inside of you. Because as you're relaxing, as you're laughing, you're releasing endorphins. Endorphins are things that that give us a sense of peace and they make us feel better. So as we're having a great time and we're laughing and doing even some silly things that we wouldn't normally do, but we're having a great time doing them, that wall comes down. And as we gently and lovingly share the love of God and how good he is, there's nothing to resist. And when you when you have your eye closed and no one looking around, things happen. We did a week uh presentation in the Bahamas on a little island called Manawork. A missionary burst in brought my whole family. The only time my whole family got to go out out of the country in ministry. And uh they they weren't that old, but they uh my oldest was old enough to actually clown with me, and my wife clowned with me. So we were performing, and the first night of the is a small enough to island that if the Baptists do something, everyone goes to the Baptist day. If the Pentecostals do something, everybody goes. So when this church had us come in, the entire town was lined up to come in. And to the the shock and and fear of everyone, the meanest man on the island, the vicious man, the one who steals from people and cusses at people, walked into the church with his kids. This guy was so grisly, he had things climbing around in his beard. I'm not exaggerating. You could see them moving around in his in his beard, long, nasty, oily hair, clothes that looked like they should have been in a rag bag long ago. And his wife and his kids came in and they looked like they were brow beaten to the point where they just they didn't even smile, they just had their heads hung low. But as we began, he began to have fun with the kids, and he began to sing with the with the kids. He began to be like a kid in every way through the whole thing, and the people of the church were just shocked. They expected him to blow up and hurt somebody, and he was singing, Jesus is the rock of my salvation. His banner over me is love. And by the end of it, I said with every eye closed and no one looking around, if Jesus has shown his love to you, if if you feel like you want this new life with the love of God and a chance for a new life and things to be different, if you want to be changed, raise your hand. And he went and raised his hand. And the whole his kids looked up and his wife looked up and just started sobbing, just crying like you would when someone dies. And they raised their hands gladly. And when the church people looked around, a lot of them, even some of the adults, looked at each other and they raised their hands too, like, shoot, I I got nothing to hide. If he if he's willing to, I'm willing to admit I need it too. So when it was we had the altar call, and I said, If you if you wanted Jesus come forward, the pastor will pray with you. And he came up with his kids, he got to the up there, and everybody cleared the way so he got there first. After he gave his life to Jesus, he and his his kids left. We we saw the kids the rest of the week. We didn't see mom and dad. So the last night of the of the week, he comes in with his kids, and he's a changed man. He's had not only one shower, but obviously several. He's had his hair was cut, his beard was trimmed, there was nothing climbing in his beard. He he didn't even look like the same person. His wife had beautiful, nice, clean clothes on, his kids were were scrubbed clean, and they had nice looking clothes on. And we had the whole service, and then he at the end he says, I got something to say, and the whole room just jumped, like, what happened? And he walks up with a with a burlap bag and says, You all know me, I was the meanest guy, and I don't I I don't want to be him anymore. You know, I gave my heart to Jesus the first night, and I all of a sudden I looked around and realized my wife and kids were living in a dump because I hadn't cared. So I took him to the shelter, and it's a Christian shelter, and they took us in and they taught us how to live for God, and they cleaned us up and showed us how good it was. And I was so grateful that I didn't come the rest of the week because I did the dishes for the whole shelter to show them my gratitude. And I come tonight for one reason, besides what I want to tell everybody how good Jesus is. I got something to do. And he pulls out of his bag this big round piece of wood with a six-legged starfish on it. And he says, Everybody that's a fisherman knows what this is. When you f when you get a regular starfish with five legs, you throw it back in. But if you get a six-legged one, it's like the gods of fishing gave you six years of promised good harvest. So you you you protect it with your life. He said, Well, I was protecting mine until I met the great fisherman. And when I gave my heart to Jesus, he told me I didn't need any luck. I needed him. So as a way of showing my gratitude, I'm giving my starfish to the clown. And brother, that's that starfish hangs on my wall even today, 25 years, 30 years later.

Israel Caminero 41:04

Amen.

David Ebel 41:05

And the word is that he's still just preaching for Jesus.

Israel Caminero 41:08

That's good.

David Ebel 41:10

That's that's powerful. So, you know, lives are are are profoundly changed. But when people relax, open up, laughter is important. You don't have to be, it doesn't have to be like a comic movie where you're rolling on the floor laughing, but just relaxed, listening, having a good time, and then sharing the love of God.

Israel Caminero 41:30

Right.

David Ebel 41:31

It changes lives.

Israel Caminero 41:33

Amen.

David Ebel 41:34

It does.

Israel Caminero 41:35

Definitely the joy of the Lord is powerful.

David Ebel 41:39

The joy of the Lord is our strength.

Israel Caminero 41:49

Praising God and it's because that joy that he gives us. We didn't have him there during that time, we wouldn't be doing that. We'd be miserable.

David Ebel 42:00

Well, he never leaves us or forsakes us, he's he's with us always.

Israel Caminero 42:04

Right.

David Ebel 42:04

And the Bible tells us to praise the Lord at all times. It does not praise the Lord when he feels good.

Israel Caminero 42:09

Right.

David Ebel 42:10

It's at all times.

Israel Caminero 42:11

Exactly.

David Ebel 42:12

And when we get used to that idea that that he's always with me, he's right next to me, he never leaves me or forsakes me. The Holy Spirit lives inside of me. I'm never alone. And it gets hard. I mean, brother, I've almost died seven times. It gets hard. Interesting, in every one of the doctors' sets of notes for when I've been in the hospital, there's always a comment that that the patient is so cooperative we don't know what to do with it. He's too nice. Yeah. Of course. And if they they just don't understand the love of God. You know, I'm not gonna give them a hard time for trying to help me. Right. I'm gonna I want them to do I want some of them to say, What's going on? Why are you so nice?

unknown 42:56

That's right.

David Ebel 42:56

Usually I bring some of my pictures along and give them to the nurses just to show love.

Israel Caminero 43:02

That's good too. You gotta show them love, like you said. So, David, looking back on your journey, what would you say to someone who feels overwhelmed by limitations or suffering?

David Ebel 43:13

Limitations are just part of how life is. It's kind of like Yahtzee, some things are just dealt to us. But when you put your trust in Jesus, you get hope. The Bible tells us there's a measure of hope and faith given to every man. But when we use it, God enhances it. It grows it. It's like a muscle. It gets better, the more we use it, the bigger it gets, and the more stronger it gets. And so the struggle may not get easier, but your ability to endure and get and get over it gets easier. You get you get courage that you didn't have. You get your hope increases so you can see there is light at the end of the tunnel. That you know that this isn't the end of it, this is just a difficult moment. Chapter of your life, this is just one thin chapter. And if you're like me, the harder it is, the more I want to do for God. So I get the harder it is, the more I am challenged to go love somebody, to encourage somebody, to get on the phone and tell somebody that that that I love them and God does too. Because that's what our purpose in life is, is to be reflectors of his love.

Israel Caminero 44:25

That's right. Thank you for that. Now I want to ask: is there a life verse or a scripture that has anchored your faith? Like when you're having a bad day, or not even if you're having a bad day, just a verse that you can go back to, read, and reflect on it. And what's that verse and what does it mean to you?

David Ebel 44:48

Well, God gave it to me the week I got saved. It's Romans 12, 1 and 2. I'm going to paraphrase it. The King James says, I beseech ye, therefore, brother, the uh the more common language is to say, I plead with you, brothers, that you present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. Don't be conformed to this world, be transformed by the renewing of your mind that you can prove the good and wonderful will of God. What that means to me is that um when I get up in the morning, I need to take me and put it at the feet of Jesus. It's not my day, it's his. It's not my pain, it's his. It's not my grief, it's his. It's not my good day, it's his because I want him to be the master, the Lord, and the king of my life. That doesn't mean I become a robot. It just means I make a choice that I I want his guidance, his peace, his hope, his promises to be real today. And then as a result, if I am a living sacrifice, I will desire to be holy and to learn the word of God and to not just do what the world says because it does it, not to become a chameleon and be churchy on Sunday and something else on Tuesday, but to to be every day a living sacrifice. By doing that, people watch your life and they know. I mean, I go in the grocery store, stand in line in cutoffs, and a lady will say, Do you know God? Yeah. You know, I'm going through the most terrible time, and I need someone to pray for me. And I think God wants you to pray for me because I know just I can feel you're close to God. That's not because I'm being preachy.

Israel Caminero 46:37

Right.

David Ebel 46:38

It's because I'm a living sacrifice. I'm available, I'm an open conduit. So he can love through me.

Israel Caminero 46:46

That's right. That's such a timely word for anyone listening today. That transformation is possible for you too. God is still renewing minds and restoring lives. So now we're going to my back to the past segment of the podcast. And what my back to the past segment is, if you could speak to your younger self, the version of you navigating pain, confusion, and hopelessness, what would you want him to know that you know now?

David Ebel 47:16

I would want him to know Jesus. It troubled me when I gave my life to Christ at 20. I I was so upset that I knew kids, I discovered kids from my my school experience that I known for years, who were Christians the whole time, and and never told me. I would want that younger self to know Jesus and his love before he's 20, so that he would have hope. So he would have a reason to believe in beyond the pain. You know, and I would I would want him to know that this isn't the end of it. This is just the moment that greater things are ahead and he needs to hang on because those greater things are worth it.

Israel Caminero 47:55

Amen. That's good. That's good. So, David, I want to say thank you for sharing your testimony with my audience today. He did mention some pictures that he has on his website, and if anyone wants to go and check those pictures out or even pour into his ministry, I will have links to all that on the description of this podcast. So I really encourage you to go and look at the website, and one of those pictures that he might have might intrigue you, or you might want to purchase it, like he said. And I do recommend and ask my listeners to support the guests that have been here. So hopefully someone will go and pour into your ministry.

David Ebel 48:35

That would be wonderful. But one more thing. I wrote a book. I wrote a book. It's a story of my life. It's called When the Doctors Say No, God says yes. And you can get it on Amazon. The Kindle version is five bucks. If you want a paper version or, you know, a real book, Amazon has those available too. I'm more worried about people hearing my story than I am uh which book you buy, which way you buy your book. But I I encourage people to read it and then get it to someone who also needs to read it.

Israel Caminero 49:10

That's right. And I and I I'll have links to that book on the description of the podcast also if you want to go bless David and read his story and like I said earlier, pour into his ministry. Before we close, David, I'd love to invite you to pray for us.

David Ebel 49:26

I'd be honored. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, in Jesus' name, we come to you grateful. We're grateful for the the listeners, every one of them. We're grateful for our host. We're grateful for this podcast that is out there sharing the love of God. Lord, I pray for each of the our listeners that you would meet them where they're at, that you would know them for who they are, that through your Holy Spirit, you would touch their hearts and draw them close to you. That you give them a hunger to get to know you, and that you would help them discover the love of God. God, I'm I know you that you know my heart. You know I don't worry about the buildings people go to. I'm worried about the relationship with you because you'll take care of sending them to the building they need to go to. But what we need is is Jesus. We need all of you. So, Lord, I pray that all of you becomes real to all of them, that they would open their heart gate and let you just love them and come in. That you do a mighty work of love in Jesus' name.

Israel Caminero 50:31

Amen. Amen. Amen. David, thank you again for sharing your story with such honesty and openness. Your life is a powerful reminder that our circumstances do not have the final say. God does. What could have been a story of defeat becomes a tear a testimony of grace, purpose, and hope. I'm truly grateful you spent this time with us.

David Ebel 50:52

I'm honored to be here. I do have an email address if people want to write me.

Israel Caminero 50:57

You can say it, I can link it on the podcast, whatever you want.

David Ebel 51:00

My podcast is God Says Yes. So the email is Godsays Yes. Podcast at gmail.com.

Israel Caminero 51:09

I'll have links to all that on the description of the podcast, like I said earlier. But to everyone listening, if this episode encouraged you, challenged you, or spoke to your heart in any way, I invite you to like, share, and subscribe to the Living Testimonies Podcast. You never know who might need to hear a story like this. And remember, no situation is beyond God's reach, no life is too broken, no story is without hope. Your story is still being written. Until next time, this is Israel Caminero with Living Testimonies Podcast. And no matter what season you're walking through, never forget, this is your story, but it's all for his glory.