The Power of God Revealed

 

hortly after my trip to Mexico, I had lunch with Emily at Perkins to discuss our relationship. As the man, and as my men’s Bible study training had taught me, I had the special responsibility of defining my intentions toward her and to clarify any questions there might be to remove obscurity and stress. I told her that I liked her for what I saw so far, and I told her that I would like to get to know her better with the intent to date in the future if we both found it mutually agreeable. She bluntly responded, “I’m not ready to get married.” Startled and slightly taken aback, I lowered my eyebrows in confusion as I assured her that I did not intend to propose marriage at this time but rather to propose that we be friends with dating potential in the future. I wanted her to keep a reminder in her back pocket that I might wish to date her in the future so that she should not unknowingly start dating some other guy—specifically the guy who I figured had taken a fancy to her. It took some convincing, but she eventually agreed to be my friend.

As it turned out, my move was likely imperative for our future. I later learned that the guy doting on her once gave her his sole! It was merely the sole of his shoe, but this clearly demonstrated an interest on his part even if she did not recognize it at the time. He also shared a dream with her about how something he loved would be taken from him and thus she was. When Emily told me about his dream after we were married, I took this revelation as evidence that God saw our marriage coming and perhaps even orchestrated it. Then again, God could just as well have been trying to stop it but perhaps the recipient did not take the hint.

             It certainly did not take long before Emily and I officially considered ourselves dating and we spent many nights talking about our faith and the state of Christianity. I could feel my heart overflowing with amazement and wonder as we bonded, studied, shared stories, sought after truth, and devised plans to rectify the lost love of Christ. Looking around, we saw so many people professing to be Christians, and yet they all seemed so similar to every other secular person. They focused their attention on TV, video games, fashion, money, careers, friends, drinking, music, sports, hobbies, and some even focused on school of all things. Such interests were their life and God took the back seat. They saw Crusade as merely a social club for the most part and church usually rated even lower. They had not counted the cost of following Christ and they had not given their lives to his calling.

I cared so little about this life and its material nature that I once advised a fellow crusader that he ought to dump his girlfriend because she had intended to buy shoes priced at over a hundred dollars. I saw this as extremely worldly and wasteful and I warned him to stay clear away. If she already focused so much on vanity in shoes, he could be sure to have troubles in the future if they were to marry. So many Christians could not seem to escape the trappings of this world in light of the eternal future ahead of us. The kingdom of God in all its powerful glory stood before us calling our names while most people stared at their televisions or partied.

             Some people found their faith interesting enough to go to Bible study or to join a retreat for fun, but few seemed to have made a commitment to serve God with their life. They were still learning or were curious but they had not yet made a true decision. They were not even willing to help a brother in need of a Perkin’s lunch after a fast. I saw mostly lukewarm Christianity and Jesus graphically expressed in Revelation 3:16 that lukewarm Christians would be spewed out of his mouth. Something had to be done and people had to return to radical Christianity. Emily and I wanted to spur them back on to be hot and useful to our God.

             Most everyone seemed perfectly fine with this lukewarm Christianity, however, while I did not find this acceptable in the slightest. God called us to be radicals and not to “hide our light under a bushel.” Everyone’s love for Christ and love for others had seemingly been put out, but I would not succumb to the pressures of this world. I decided that Christianity now equated to the religion of the Pharisees of Jesus’ day and that the majority of Christendom was sick, dying, and missing the main point: live out radically for God and for others. It needed to be fixed or at the very least the truth needed to be pronounced so that seekers could find it. In the end, I figured it could not actually be fixed since everything had to get worse until the apocalypse, but I still took seriously my duty to do what I could do to save as many as would listen.

             I spoke passionately about this with everyone I had the chance to speak with about it. Only a handful of people had any interested in what I shared and even fewer would agree that love and concern needed more emphasis. I and those who did agree considered making a new student organization called “Love is Loud” after the then-popular song by The David Crowder Band. It would be made-up entirely of radicals who desired nothing more than to give up their life to God. Alas, it never got off the ground as we figured the three of us would never find others willing to join as evidenced by there only being the three of us. It simply remained velleity whilst we tried to determine what we could do to make a difference and to redirect the intentions of Christianity back toward love and living for others.

I recognized that much of what I learned via my own studying did not seem to be lessons that many churches would focus on. I realized just how lost much of Christianity must be and I began to question all sorts of things. Questions often popped into my head that few were willing to contemplate. Was Jesus really God? Did he really die as a sacrifice for sins? Was the Bible really the word of God? If Satan were so sneaky, what confidence do we have that he did not write the Bible himself to redirect our paths away from the true God? How could anyone distinguish whether Satan wrote the Bible or if God wrote the Bible? What is the tell-tale sign indicating the trickery of Satan over the truth of God? I tended to contemplate these questions briefly but I often put them aside for fear of questioning God and being ostracized for bringing them up. I could not determine if God brought the questions up in my mind or if the devil did.

I would console myself by expressing that I am just seeking truth and that God would be proud of this, but I still felt caution would be the better part of valor and I decided not to be too infatuated with such dangerous questions. I often fell back to the commonly held positions on these things and talked very little about them, but I logged them in my mind in case evidence started showing one way or the other. The questions more or less remained stale for quite a while but eventually the evidence around me started weighing in on them.

             The Bible had already built a precedent that religious leaders can be faulty in their understanding even to the point of rejecting their own Messiah and killing all the prophets. That is about the biggest blunder church leaders could possibly make. When coupling this with the obvious fact that there exists many denominations of Christianity which all disagree with one another, and that I, too, found discrepancies, I realized that I would have to do a lot of personal study and praying to really know the truth. It got me thinking and questioning everything I read in the Bible—not as to whether or not it was true, per se, but as to what it really meant. I began recognizing all the unfulfilled promises of power from God such as the gifts of the Spirit: healing, tongues, interpretation, signs and wonders. I became convinced that these things remained undone solely due to the lack of faith of those who called themselves Christians. The power of God must still be up for grabs if only we would do the will of God.

             Stories from overseas missionaries often included miracles which seemed to confirm this hypothesis. I simply could not find anyone devoted enough to be worthy of the power of God. Everything kept leading me to believe that the problem consisted of apathetic Christians and the majority of the church being dead as a doornail. God needed radicals to truly pour out his blessings. He called us to be radical to the point of hating our own family in contrast to our love for him. And further, our family meant nothing if they were not part of the kingdom of God. Our mothers and brothers and sisters were supposed to be those that do the will of God as Jesus stated in Matthew 12:46-50 and Luke 8:21-22.

             Ablaze with hope in the power of God, I feverishly prayed and asked if I would ever walk in his power to heal the sick and the lame. I continued praying as I walked home one cold and fateful night. The snow-covered trees lining the road swayed in the wind and the sparkling, starlit sky demonstrated the magnificence of God’s creation. I am not entirely sure why since the sky was equally in front of me, but I turned around as I crunched snow underfoot and I stared up questioning aloud if I would ever experience God’s power. Suddenly, the most brilliantly colorful object shot across the heavens. My heart leapt from within me and I could hardly contain the joy. It just had to be a message for me. I took this as confirmation that indeed I would perform miracles someday.

Never before had I seen a sign of such awesome magnitude or any such object in the heavens. It was no meteorite or shooting star and no comets were documented to have graced our night sky on that wonderful occasion. Filled with awe, I then requested of God to hit me on the head with an acorn if he would like me to drop everything and go now to serve him elsewhere as a true missionary. Unfortunately, it did not happen no matter how slowly I walked and no matter how many trees I purposely walked beneath. In fact, it always seemed like God shied away from doing the signs I requested and yet he willingly performed the signs I did not request. This is, of course, called confirmation bias. Most anything can be a sign if you are looking for one with no particular constraints.

             I discussed these things with Emily and she one day threw an acorn at my head as a joke. I realized that I did not give any such guidelines as far as the sign goes as to when, where, and how it should occur. Since God does indeed use people to bring about his will, perhaps he did desire that I should go and he perhaps wanted to use her as a part of the sign in order to indicate that she and I should be partners in this endeavor. We frequently talked about leaving and we ultimately decided that we would be faithful to the power of God and become missionaries. We would quit school, get married, and learn as much from mentors as possible at the esteemed Forerunner School of Ministry that our church kept talking about.

I quit trying to succeed in school since it no longer mattered, but Emily kept studying anyway despite the obvious waste of time it would be. I considered such actions to indicate her lack of faith in her decision, but I figured I had enough faith for the both of us. I failed all my classes and instead focused on ministry and sharing the excitement of our endeavors. Well, I tried anyway.

             No one matched our excitement and many people told us directly that they disapproved of our plan. Of course, I had already decided that they did not trust in the power of God as demonstrated by their lack of desire to pray and their focus on meaningless things, so their opinions did not mean much to me. As far as I was concerned, they were all atheists proclaiming to be Christian. They could advise me of nothing seeing as they were those in need of council in the power of God and in making the commitment to live radically as Jesus demanded.

As a sign of my faith and to help spread the word, on one of my statistics tests I wrote a brief explanation that my lack of passing had no reflection on the professor’s abilities to teach. I explained that I had found a better life in Christ and that I did not need education any longer. I would rely solely on the power of God. I was so ready for this. I could not wait to see what God would do, and indeed he came through with many magnificent things which I will soon explain.

             Our church talked a great deal about prophesying and healing and taking trips to the International House of Prayer (IHOP) down near Kansas City, Missouri. They boasted of the power of that place, the healings, the prophecies, and touted the Forerunner School of Ministry which IHOP had started. Seeing as the power already existed in such a place, it only made sense that we should be faithful ourselves and become a part of it. Some of our fellow church-goers shared in the joy of our decision and wished that they could likewise drop everything and go. Of course, they always had some kind of worldly reason preventing them so I had little sympathy for their velleitous ways. While many more people disagreed with our decision, we readily trusted these more faithful few as providing Godly advice. Seeing as God already poured out his power on others, we merely needed to leverage their learning and their grace in the eyes of God. From my perspective, I saw zero risk in the endeavor. God would certainly pull through for us.

             One night, our church held an all-nighter where we prayed and praised until morning. I led a praise band comprised of crusaders for half of the night. We took turns with the church’s official band every few songs. The night ignited the flames in each of our hearts and even resulted in the healing of quite a few people. I had heard that multiple people had complained about back pain and upon aligning their legs, the church leaders would note that one leg extended further than the other. They prayed over these individuals and the shorter leg miraculously grew and matched the longer leg. I did not see this occur myself, but I heard about it from people I trusted. This is actually a common trick that I would later learn from Darren Brown who exposed many faith healers. I highly recommend looking him up on YouTube if you get the chance.

After hearing of these back healings via leg lengthening, I immediately thought of Emily with high hopes. She had recently hurt her back quite badly while playing broomball and it left her in constant pain that doctors could not do anything about. She often emphasized her displeasure with being broken and she had me tie her shoes for her on occasion. She could not even lean over to get a drink of water from a fountain. It really started to worry me about our future plans as husband and wife. So, having the faith of a child, I triumphantly walked up to some leaders and told them of Emily’s plight. Surely, if God were healing people this night, he would heal Emily as well.

The elders came and prayed over Emily while I watched a couple feet away. I begged God to heal her since our marriage would certainly not work if she remained handicapped. We had heavenly work to do and we could not do it if she could not move. This would be the perfect time for God to show us his power so that we could go out and share it with others. As they prayed, no whooshes of wind blew, no magical floating flames appeared, and no trumpets sounded, but Emily seemed miraculously healed as she leaned forward and touched her toes entirely pain-free. The very power of God demonstrated itself plainly right before my face. I saw it as absolute proof that his power still existed and that indeed all things were possible. I also saw it as God’s blessing toward our marriage and his anointing us as missionaries together. God clearly lived and clearly still performed miracles at our behest. What more could we possibly need to know?

Of course, I could not see or feel anything myself to know any of this for sure; Emily simply stated that she felt better and refrained from crying out when she touched her toes. The elders warned her that Satan would try to deceive her into thinking that she still felt pain from the injury but that she should ignore it and proclaim her healing over such false sensations. As anticipated, the pain did keep coming back, but her persistence in faith eventually saw it gone for good. Or, in other words, she healed naturally over time with a brief placebo of feeling better which we attributed to the mighty working of God. But that is certainly not how we felt at the time. In truth, her back continued to experience pain but she entertained the lie that it must be better because God healed it.

Emily later told me that she felt embarrassed to share that her back hurt since it would be demonstrating her lack of faith to remain healed. It would be seen as a weakness and pronouncing the win of Satan over her life. The truth of her pain became an unspeakable lie and the lie of healing continued as truth. I would later realize this as one of the ways that heavenly labels were switched within Christianity. Lies are often taken as truth and facts are proclaimed as lies in the same way that heaven now bears the label of hell and hell now bears the label of heaven. Her hesitance to share her pain continued the effect in my mind that she had been miraculously healed. I had zero indication otherwise and my excitement in sharing the healing story with others sealed her lips all the more. She could not make me out to be a fool, demonstrate her own lack of faith, and so disgrace the power of God with a corrective utterance.

             After that night, I realized that the world needed much more of this power from on high. They needed healing, they needed insight, and they needed guidance into the truth. With the power of God at my back, I did not need any power or skill of my own. I could go out and preach like they did in Jesus’ day taking nothing with me, healing the sick, and pronouncing the coming of the Kingdom of God. We would start a revolution with our faith and change the world. We would usher in the coming of Christ in power and teach the world to love again. We were destined to be the mighty messengers of God and the bane of the devil and we were heading out soon!