My Journey of Faith Shared With You

As I pointed out in my last post, I'm sensing that God wants me to use this blog in a more intimate and expanded way of sharing my journey of faith with you, so that you can learn God's way, by seeing what He is doing in my life. I'm concerned about doing this because I will have to open myself up and reveal things that I would rather hide, and I realize you will see me as I really am, a work in progress, and within that work includes failure, frustration, anger, confusion, short comings and a whole bunch more. But I sense God wants me to share what He is doing in me. Up till now He has only had me share the revelation of His word that He has given me, and I have enjoyed that, but now God wants me to add more to that. It's possible that some of you may think much more highly of me then you ought to, because of the revelations I have shared with you. If you are like me, you place such people in a special category and you think they have something from God that you don't. Now the risk is, that as I reveal myself to you, you will see me as I really am. That I may disappoint you or that I'm not the man of faith that you thought I was, but at the risk of this happening, I'm going to step out and follow God's lead and trust Him with everything he wants revealed through me. I know that God's intent in all this is to help you with your journey of faith, but by helping you, He will be helping me as well.


Let me start with this first thought so that you know where I'm coming from. The very first time (and this was many years ago) I laid my eyes on what Jesus said in John 14:12 as a new baby believer, I could hardly contain myself. I didn't doubt it for a second. I just grabbed a hold of it and embraced it. Jesus said, "he who believes in Me (well, that would be me), the works that I do he will do also." I'm telling you, that took my breath away. I had never heard another person ever utter such a thing. I went to church for a whole year after being born again, and I never heard any man or women proclaim that they could do what Jesus did. It took me several years of looking at and meditating that word from Jesus before I could accept it as truth. Why am I sharing this with you? Because my whole journey with Jesus these last 29 years has been nothing more than me learning how to do the works of Jesus. And let me tell you right up front that satan doesn't care how much bible knowledge you learn, he only cares if you step out and do something with what you learned. He will try anything to stop you, just like he did Jesus and His followers. Satan will let you play church all you want, but it's when you step out and be the church, that changes everything. Satan has challenged me every step of the way in this desire of mine to do what Jesus did, but I'm still in pursuit as of today. I've quit many times, I've thrown it down, I've said ugly things to God in my apparent failure of trying to do what Jesus did, but He would always revive me and get me back on that path of acting just like Jesus.

I've learned much about doing the work of Jesus over the years. From day one I've had in my heart the desire to minister to the hurting and those in need. I've spent years doing just that. I even helped pastor an inner city church in Columbus, Ohio for over four years and ministered to numerous people over that time. So you would think I'm well qualified to minister and do the works of Jesus. But let me tell you, you never just arrive at a certain level of ministry and just stay there automatically. You fight to keep the ground you have taken against the enemy.

Now just this past Thursday evening, I was helping with healing prayer ministry at my church. I arrived prayed up and what I considered full of the Holy Spirit. I moved confidently before a small 4 year old boy that I had previously prayed for and his mom was there holding him with hope in her heart that God would heal her son of autism. I began to pray boldly in the faith, but as I prayed, this boy became loud, crying, and moving all over the place. It was then that I realized that I did exactly what Peter did when he stepped out of the boat and walked on the water. He started well, but he took his eyes off Jesus and began to sink. The very same thing happened to me. I got my eyes on that boy and took them off Jesus and began to sink. I finished praying as best I could, but I walked away drained and feeling very inadequate. It felt as if everything I believed drained out of me. I've never seen Jesus like that when I see Him in the word ministering, how did He do it? Well that's the part I'm learning.

When I left that prayer time I was asked to go to someones house to pray for his young daughter who was having severe problems with her bowels and was very constipated. When I got there she was in much discomfort. There were three of us praying, and as I laid my hands on her to pray for her, she began to cry out in pain. I prayed in faith as best I could, but I don't think I recovered very well from the earlier prayer time. Again by the time I got to my car and drove home, I felt powerless and totally useless as God's servant. I was even angry with God that He would put me in such a situation like that and not prepare me, for I felt powerless. I walked away from that situation not feeling much like doing the works of Jesus

It took over 24 hours for God to get my attention and begin to minister to me and He began to reveal to me that it didn't look quite so bad from His side, that I had actually done what He asked me to do. He reminded me of a new song I have just heard by Hillsong. The song says "the same power that conquered the grave lives in me". I realized I took Him to those prayer situations, and He used my hands as well as my mouth to accomplish His work. I believe His word is at work in both of these situations and that we will see the fruit born out of those prayers.

After all this time of ministry to hurting people, I realize I'm still moved way too much by what I see and feel instead of being moved by the word only. I feel like I should have learned this many years ago and truthfully I did, but I still have to do what I learned and I'm believing the Holy Spirit will be there to help me with this very thing next time out. The most important thing for me is to keep at it and that's just what I'm going to do.

If I'm going to live for Him, Then I'm going to live like Him. As He is, so are we in this world. (1John 4:17)
If I'm going to give up my life for Him, then I'm going to take His life and live like He lived. What I see Jesus do, that's what I choose to do.