God Rewards
Those Who Hunger and Thirst After Him
(Partial
Testimony)
In
the early 1970’s I was a young and impressionable believer like
everyone else, I went to meetings, I
got saved. Sometime later I got filled with the Spirit, at which
point I was turned inside out and sought God with my whole heart.
(Or at least at the time what I was made to believe my whole
heart.)
I
became discipled to various teachers (Not as in “Discipleship.”
or “Shepherdship.” (I am not sure that these phrases existed
in 1972-73) But I was taken by Kenneth Hagan, Smith Wigglesworth,
Dr. John Graham Lake, Charles Finney, DL Moody, and many others.
I
did not read ordinary books about ordinary believers and their
tepid theories and opinions I was reading the books of men and
women that were moved upon mightily by God that were transformed
within and without and lived in demonstration of the Gospel.
I decided at an early age in the Lord that if anyone
knew the way to the heart of God these people did rather than
the theologians -- and so for me the hunt was on.
So,
I read their books, if they had tapes I listened to them over
and over and over. I quoted them, I tried to live by their precepts,
and I taught their words to others – that is the definition
of a disciple. (This was done in counter distinction to Christ’s
Commandment that we be His disciples alone. [No man can serve
two masters])
Looking
back, now I can see the hand of God on me in ways I could neither
see nor have imagined in those days – and if someone would have
came up to me and told me that one by one I would discover that
none of these dead people could speak to me or guide me to God
I would have told them that they were crazy.
The
more I read the more hungry I became, but because I was a man
with many masters with very diverse opinions of what was right
and wrong and true and false, it led me ultimately into confusion.
Taking these men and women’s words to their full meaning and
logical conclusions this caused a derailment of epic proportions
in my life. So I regrouped and made a more careful selection
of my masters and again ended up spinning off the highway of
holiness and ending up in the ditch with no one to dig me out.
So I set to work once more making an even more careful selection
of whom I would follow . . . All the time unknowingly I was
tossing aside one after another of these "Great" men
and women of Faith as my lords and masters.
There
was a day that I had a vocabulary of hundreds of testimonies
that I could call up at will. There was a day that I could quote
hundreds of bible verses and find almost any verse in scripture
in one or two minutes. Today I am a mere shadow of my former
self. (3/2004-5/2004) Gone burned out of my mind and consciousness
are those seemingly endless list of stories and testimonies.
Today when I speak extemporaneously, it is weak and empty. It
is greatly humbling. I do not speak on any given subject off
the cuff very well at all. I need these days to use very concise
notes, with scripture text fully written out.
About
a year ago God brought me out from what can only be described
as a deep long term separation unto Him. For 19 years I could
not fellowship. I could not read any books, I could not listen
to any tapes, I could not even read
the bible. I could however pray and I did pray to Jesus and
the Father. I could worship and I did worship Jesus and God,
and I could meditate on all that I had seen and heard and spoke
over the time of my experiences with God. So I meditated and
replayed many things that I had read, that I had heard preachers
and peers speak, all those things that I had learned in bible
school, and even what I myself had taught in meetings where
I pastored.
I
had thought I had strived to do things righteously, and that
I had been in pretty good standing with God, but under God’s
divine searchlight I began to see things in a very differently.
Things that I and others had rejoiced over and had once held
up as glorious – I now saw these things had been contemptible
before God, and had been spoken or done in an arrogant spirit,
I saw lies, half truths in other’s words and in my own words.
I saw myself lying as I preached and I taught. I saw myself
giving people impressions of things that I did not have, and
or that I did not know.
During this time I found these words
continually on my heart:
Psalm 51:1-3 Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy lovingkindness: according unto the multitude of thy tender
mercies blot out my transgressions.
Wash me throughly from mine iniquity,
and cleanse me from my sin. For I acknowledge my transgressions:
and my sin is ever before me. Against
thee, thee only, have I sinned, and done this evil in thy sight:
that thou mightest be justified when thou speakest,
and be clear when thou judgest. Behold,
I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive
me. Behold, thou desirest truth in the inward parts: and in the hidden part
thou shalt make me to know wisdom. Purge me with hyssop, and
I shall be clean: wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.
Make me to hear joy and gladness;
that the bones which thou hast broken may rejoice. Hide thy
face from my sins, and blot out all mine iniquities.
Create in me a clean heart, O God; and
renew a right spirit within me. Cast me not away from thy presence;
and take not thy holy spirit from me. Restore unto me the joy
of thy salvation; and uphold me with thy free spirit.
I
spent years in deep repentance, in tears crying out to the Lord.
Basically it was just one thing after another. I wept silently
and in private. God had set it up so that there was no one to
console me, or convince me I was ok, and all this was of the
devil. Never once during this period did I say: “God this is
enough I can repent no more.” Never once did I say: “I am tired
of this repentance thing and I can’t take it any more.” All the while this went on and on for me. Deeper
and wider, deeper and wider until I became so contemptible in
my own eyes, that I could not stand myself in my sin and corruption.
You
might say I saw that in and of myself there is nothing righteous.
I saw that there were no redeeming features, nothing that I
could offer Christ to bargain for my salvation or to curry even
the smallest favor from Him.
My
deep-seated dreams and hidden-aspirations of coming into any
kind of earthshaking ministry for the rest of my life evaporated
forever. My soul was on fire. My heart was broken, but
I still had this deep abiding love for Christ and the Father
and I knew that if they sent me to hell they would have been
completely righteous and I could and would not say anything
against them.
I
was in agony for weeks if not for months.
It had been so long and become incredibly dark that I
prayed to God to die, for I was a complete failure, not even
worthy to be called His servant.
Mark 2:17 When
Jesus heard it, he saith unto them, They
that are whole have no need of the physician, but they that
are sick: I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.
And of a truth I can say that the
devil did speak to me repeated in those last few days of this
trial and he said. “Curse God and die.” And I wept and cried
aloud to God and confessed that I could not curse Him for He
was Righteous and Holy and Jesus was Righteous and Holy
that all that had befallen me in my life was Righteous. And
I prayed again to die. This went on for two nights and at the
end of this God spoke to me and said. “You are released.” And
a warm tropical presence of God came upon me in my truck that
dark Alaskan November night that was 30 below zero. (11/2003)
This Visitation
of the Lord with Him speaking and manifesting Himself to me
was epic as He began to pull me out of the pit I was in and
set me on my feet once again. The word’s Jesus Spoke: “You are
released.” Were so powerful, and so full of life, and the meaning
of what Christ said was momentous in my life as I discovered
I was released to attend church, I was released to read the
word of God, I was released from the deep hurt and anger of
Wade demanding I leave Pinecrest in 1985 after I and my then
young family returned to Pinecrest at his repeated personal
request, and on this point the Lord commanded me that I was
to contact Wade Taylor and tell him all that “I” had done for
you. I found that the Lord had released me at one count at the
time of 14 different things. Including one that I had no idea
was transpiring at the moment God spoke to me “You are released.”
And that would prove to be the hardest, most painful experience
of my entire life – when my wife of 23 years who had utterly
backslidden, deserted my two children that were living with
us at the time, on January 8th 2004 my oldest son’s
birthday, while I was away on a business trip – she had the
plane tickets secreted since some time in November 2003 – The
agony of the separation and divorce nearly killed me, as I felt
strongly that this thing did not need to be. Nevertheless During
this whole time the Lord continued to visit me manifest Himself
and speak to me on a daily basis both in the morning and the
evening for months during this time as evidenced by all the
articles that were written from all the notes that the Lord
had me write.
The
one thing that the Lord required of me was that I was to throw
away all my books, and tapes, articles I had stored up in Pinecrest
– The Lord said if I would dispose of all of those things that
He would teach me. I pondered these words, and was sad for I had
great spiritual riches stored up. But I asked the Lord for a
confirmation of His words to me, and within a matter of days
I walked into a church and the Pastor preached on dead men’s
bones – of the books and writings and tapes of those who had
passed on were a defilement and needed to be thrown out – I
was stunned by what I heard and said yes Lord and proceeded
to throw out all my tapes, all of my books except books on Greek
and Hebrew, and all of the notebooks filled with articles. When
I told Wade Taylor what I had done he was appalled – that I
would have done such a thing and could not conceive that the
Lord could have ever spoken such a thing. I told others and
was rebuked for having done so.
But no sooner had I done that then the Lord began
to do exactly what He promised He would do as evidenced by all
the articles that have been written and posted on Ekklesia in
the Wilderness. I have never been so happy and content in my walk with the
Lord, nor have I felt so close to the Lord then from that time
on, when the Lord came to visit me on that cold night in November
2003 when the Lord came and said unto me “You are released.”
Jeremiah 33:1-3 Moreover
the word of the LORD came unto Jeremiah the second time, while
he was yet shut up in the court of the prison, saying, Thus
saith the LORD the maker thereof, the LORD that formed it, to
establish it; the LORD is his name; Call unto me, and I will answer thee, and show
thee great and mighty things, which thou knowest
not.