A PERSONAL TESTIMONY TO GOD'S FAITHFULNESS
I share this "open book" with you on this page in order to help you see that God's unfailing faithfulness and love is always there to anyone who calls on his name and trusts him, especially in times if crisis. He has been faithful to me more times than I can count, despite all my times of faithless to him. I have only come to see the truth of his faithfulness through some severe circumstances that have happened in the last three years.
The Bible is full of "open books" about people, including King David's serious sins, Abraham's moments of lack in trust in God, Moses' attempt to shrink back from confronting the Pharaoh of Egypt, and Jonah's outright disobedience to God's call on his life to go and warn a city of people of God's impending judgment. But these open books reveal how God shows us time and again how he still can make perfectly evident his power in our times of utter weakness, how he still can reveal his holiness and mercy through our most sinful moments, and how he can still show us how faithful he remains to us when we are faithlessly doubting him.
From our viewpoint, our own circumstances may appear to be different from the trials and difficulties that these people had to face thousands of years ago. But what God says and does with us today is ultimately for the same purpose that he had with these people...to reveal his saving power to those who choose to trust him. What God wants us to see is that, if we trust him to live his life through us, he will do all that he promises to do. He will fulfill his own promises "to" us, by fulfilling them "through" us. We were created for his glory, and as his sons and daughters, it is absolutely necessary to God that we allow him to live his life as our Father and Creator through us. However, he does not do this by mysteriously acting in a way that we are not consciously aware of. Instead, God wants us to be partners in his eternal plans. That is why he has made prayer that listens to him so important.
Saying that God is sovereign, and wants to be the Lord of my life, does not mean that he is looking to take away the free will he gave us. It just means that he gave us this free will as a powerful tool we can use, in order that we can choose to exercise it at any time and say, "God, I'm going to trust you and obey your will, even though you have not spelled everything out to me about what you're up to, and even though you have not given me an itinerary of this direction you want me to follow you in."
God is Spirit, and he created us in his own image he says. He also says that he created us "spirit, soul, and body," in that order. Do we really know what our spirit is? Do we know what functions our spirit has and how God wants us to use those functions in order to partner with us? Our spirit includes our intuition and conscience, and it is through these that God speaks his thoughts to us most oftentimes. He created us with an intuitive spirit that can hear his spirit speak intuitively to us. He speaks to us spiritually.
The Bible oftentimes uses the words "spirit" and "heart" interchangeably. God is love and it is in our heart (spirit) that we can actually feel his love. We can feel his embrace of us. Because of this function he created us with, I can receive a thought from God's Spirit in my spirit, knowing that this thought from him did not originate in my natural mind because it cuts completely against the grain of the way I naturally think. In other words, this thought from God is not a thought that I would come up with naturally and tell myself. He tells us that his ways are not our ways, but he has given us the ability to hear his way intuitively in our spirit. His thought is a thought that seems to be coming to me out of nowhere, so I know that it is a thought that someone else is obviously telling me. I can then exercise my God-given free will to intuitively obey what God has said to me and began to walk in the way he commands, even if I don't fully know in my natural mind yet why he is telling me to do a certain thing.
At a certain point, God basically "came out of nowhere" and said to Abram, "Leave behind everything you have been naturally used to and go to a place that I will show you." He did not choose Abram because Abram was "good enough" or "religious enough" because Abram was living in his father's house that had false idols in it. He lived in a land that was full of false idols. He was living in the midst of people who were not worshipping God at all, yet God came to Abram in the midst of all that and spoke personally to him. Abram then chose to intuitively obey God's voice. He packed up all of his belongings and began to step out, not knowing in his natural mind yet where God was leading him to. Just imagine doing this. If anyone had stopped Abram along the way and asked him where he was going, Abram would have had to say, "I don't know yet where I'm going." Then that person might have asked Abram, "Well who told you to go?" And Abram would've had to say, "A God that I've never really known before told me to go."
On a natural level, this makes absolutely no sense at all. God deals with us the same way today, and he leaves us with the same answers sometimes to other people who question us about our trust in his voice. But that is exactly the way God wants us to bear witness to him in front of others. Very strange, yet God knows exactly what he is doing. "Without faith it is impossible to please me," he says. Now that makes sense because every relationship must be built on trust. This is faith that simply responds to God's voice, knowing that God is faithful to us. God promises me that in his Word that he will complete whatever he starts through me. My faith, therefore, must simply rest in his far greater faithfulness to me. Why? Because God says so. "I don't know yet why I have left my old life behind, but I'm doing so because God told me to let go of it and keep following his voice."
Because of the way God talks to us, and the way he calls us to trust him alone, much of Christianity is simply a matter of letting go of what he sees we are clinging to in the natural. We may not even oftentimes realize that we are clinging to those things...but he sees that we are. As we step out in obedience and leave whatever God has told us to let go of, we shouldn't assume that what God calls us into next will be a walk in the park. As God began to spell things out to Abram in a little more detail later, he then said to Abram, "Fear not, for I will be your shield." He did not say to Abram, "I will give you a shield," because God knew exactly what Abram would be up against. Abram was about to walk through the land of Canaan, right through a nation of people who didn't give a hoot about God, much like a lot of this world that God calls us to walk through today.
Today, I know there are so many people who are experiencing real hardship, frustration, and even despair. There is an ever increasing worry and fear over the economy, security threats, global warming, monster tornadoes, earthquakes, and increasing health issues like cancer, diabetes, and Alzheimer disease...just to name a few. None of us are exempt from future trials and difficulties in our own lives. Even if we sail smoothly through life and experience no difficulty, sooner or later all of our molecules are going to get tired of carrying us around and will shut down on us, no matter how many vitamins supplements we take. That crisis called death looms in front of each one us. But it is at God's throne that he wants to be able to tell us the most counterintuitive thing of all: "No, you're life is not over. It's just beginning. Welcome to heaven." In the meantime, we will face trials and difficulties in this earthly life.
If God is sovereign, why does he allow these trials, difficulties, suffering, pain, and death? Because in the Garden of Eden, Satan got a legal foothold that he has held ever since because we allowed sin against God to enter us through disobedience to his voice. Sinful evil gained legal ground and God allowed this encroachment because God is just. Since then God has been taking back land from this enemy, piece by piece. First it was the Promised Land, where he established his believers in true worship. Then it was through his own sacrifice in Christ on the cross and the sending of his Spirit into the hearts of people who chose to trust and obey his voice. Now the land he looks to reclaim is in your family, at your school, at your place of work, and in your social circle of people he brings you into contact with. God is the playwright, but his play includes our own unique personalities and the free will we exercise. In the end, God is going to fulfill his purpose for creating us, but there will be a lot of opposition along the way because of sin. The obituaries never say that "so-and-so died because of sin," but sin is the only thing that ultimately causes death. Not that the person died in their sin but in that fact from God that "the wages of sin is death." Then he cuts across the grain and explains in Romans 6 that his free offer and gift of atonement for sin is available to anyone who wants a way out of spiritual death and eternal separation from him.
Recently, God has told my wife and I in prayer that he has allowed some very difficult experiences to happen to our family for a reason. He did not cause these things to happen because he didn't create us as puppets on a string, but he did allow these things to happen. He could have prevented these things from happening to us, by telling me in prayer, "No, don't make this investment," but he chose not to tell me not to do what I had already decided to do. He said that through our circumstances, he wants us to share with people who have become financially fearful or devastated by some other unfair situation, and who may be feeling as though they are losing all hope, that he is their only real hope. He also said that he wants us to share with these people that he is willing and able to intercede in their life when they seek him personally. For this reason I write this open book about our experiences the past few years. It is a testimony he created, through very difficult circumstances, in which he reveals his unfailing faithfulness to us when we keep coming to him no matter what.
God also said to my wife and I that he wants us to share things with people that are most important to him... his forgiveness, his mercy, and his love for us. He has a reason for doing everything that he allows into our life, both good and bad. If you are going through something difficult, I hope this testimony to God's faithfulness and love helps you see that God wants to intervene in your life and give you inner peace through any storm. He wants to take whatever was meant for evil and turn it into good. In the end, and there's always an "in the end" with God, he will leave you wondering how he did what he did for you if you keep on clinging to him through it all. And the testimony he creates through your difficult circumstances will cause other people to say, "If God could do that in their life, I wonder what God can do in my life." That's what God is up to. He is always looking to expand his Kingdom, by revealing his power to save to others around you. That's why Jesus prayed, "Father, get glory out of this," not "Father, get me out of this," as he was on his way to the cross. Just like Jesus did, I cannot make my life only about myself and my outward circumstances. God has a much bigger picture that he wants to direct.
About twenty five years ago, I chose to say "yes" to Jesus Christ as my Savior in a way that I had never done before. I then volunteered to work as part of the video ministry team at a very large church. I spent every Sunday filming two or three worship services for the people in the lobby who couldn't find seats in the main sanctuary. I attended Bible study during the week. The sermons and teachings were all Christ-centered messages and the praise of God was thunderous praise from the congregation each Sunday. Being in church was exciting for the first time because there were thousands of people at every service and the music was tremendous. At the same time, I graduated from college and began a financial career on Wall Street, first as an accountant and then as a securities trader for a hedge fund. On Sunday my life was filled up with God and God's worshippers. The rest of the week was exciting too, but that excitement was only about making lots of money. I figured God was just blessing me for 6 days because I was worshipping and serving his church one day.
But even though I had accepted Christ as my Savior, I did not really know what it meant to give him his rightful place as Lord of my life. The name Jesus means "God is salvation" because God is the One who "saves us from our sins" and he's the One who came to us as God in Christ. But his full name is "the Lord Jesus Christ." He must be the Lord over every area of my life, and for him to be that, I must be willing to listen to him...but I wasn't really doing that the rest of the week. I didn't know what it meant to give him his rightful place as Lord over every area of my life. It was being preached, but it didn't sink in like God wanted it to. I knew from God's Word that I had been "saved by his grace through faith in Christ," but something in me convinced me that I could "take it from there." In other words, I basically said to God, "Thanks for your grace in saving me, and please keep giving me your grace in every area of my life...except for this area over here and that area over there. I've got those areas under control, if you don't mind." I wrongly believed that I could live the Christian life by continuing to depend solely on my own human strength and willpower in many areas. I was still trying to rely on my own natural capacities and abilities only, in order to try and do things that I thought would be pleasing to God.
The Bible calls this way of thinking "setting the mind on the things of the flesh," or "walking according to the flesh." However, it also says that to try and live the Christian life this way is death, not life. Why? Because when I try to live the Christian life by my own natural capacities and abilities alone, I am effectively cutting myself off from the One who is the source of my life and who maintains my life every day. It's like a branch that thinks it can produce fruit on its own, apart from the vine that supports it.
The problem was that I didn't even realize I was doing this. After all, I was alive and well as far as I could tell. God was blessing me with financial prosperity. Earning more and more money, I was becoming more self-dependent. This was then leading me to believe that I could somehow establish my own sense of self-security. I was following along with the world's definition of maturity, which says that over time I should be able to do more and more on my own. I was not seeing that God's definition of spiritual maturity means greater faith and dependence on him each day, not greater self-dependence and self-sufficiency. The problem with such a self-centered life is that, in God's eyes, it results in misdirected pride in self, rather than pride in him for all that he wants to keep doing through me.
After three years, my wife and I moved away to another state so that we could raise our kids in the suburbs, while I commuted into the city to work as a trader. In moving away from our old neighborhood in the city, we also moved away from the church we had been involved in. For the next twenty years, I threw myself into my career and drifted away from the personal relationship God had invited me into with himself. I went to church in the suburbs less frequently and basically became a Christian in name only. I was still being the once-a-week Christian I had actually been. I was believing God's Word but not really listening to his voice and walking in the ways he wanted me to go. I was following his written Word in church, reciting all of the creeds together with the rest of the congregation, but I was not listening to the One inside of me who is the Living Word. I saw that God speaks to people throughout the Bible, but for some reason, I lost sense of the fact that he was willing to talk with me like that too.
After twenty years of living like this, a nagging feeling of emptiness started to develop within me, despite my successes in business and my comfortable financial situation. Something inside of me was beginning to ask, "Is this all there really is to life?" At the same time, it seemed like something else inside was saying, "There's more, much more." In time, I would come to realize that it was God's still, small quiet voice that was saying that. Little did I know just how much my parents were praying for me then, and it was their prayers that he was answering. It was not my prayers because my prayers were not one-way prayers to him in church that were not taking the time to listen to him. My prayers were ritual prayers only. In effect, I was just trying to leave certain messages on God''s answering machine, forgetting that he doesn't use an answering machine in prayer. "Call on me and I will answer you," he says.
The feeling of emptiness inside of me wasn't a desperate feeling, as much as it was a subtle feeling that kept
growing stronger over time. I had quit Wall Street about 8 years ago. I had grown tired of the commuting into the
city and I wasn't seeing my own family much because of all the dinners, ball games, and meetings I had to go to
during the week. Finally, I just couldn't keep sweeping this feeling of inner emptiness under the rug anymore. I
could not keep pretending as though it wasn't there. So I started asking myself questions about my purpose in life
that I realized I couldn't come up with answers for. I painted on canvasses, exercised at the gym, coached Little
League, and watched my daughter ice skate in showcases and competitions. But then one evening, in a spirit of
frustration and futility, because of family circumstances that had now become severely strained as my wife and I
tried to raise our two kids through their teenage years, I put my head in my hands and said, "God, everything I'm
saying and doing as a father is right according to what you say in your Bible, yet everything in my family is going
wrong. Things are falling apart."
I had been a "buddy father" with my kids, but now they were pushing me away as teenagers do. I wasn't
handling that very well. I would call my parents for helpful advice, but they would remind me that I was a
teenager once too. That didn't help me much though because I had grown out of my own teenage rebellion as a
preacher's kid many, many years ago. I had different problems now that weren't the same. At the same time, I
knew very well that the closeness I had once experienced with God twenty years ago had now just become
nothing more to me than a very dim image in my rear view mirror and I could not deny that truth. What had
happened to that personal closeness I used to have with him?
The truth is that, if I had looked in my own mirror honestly, I would have seen the fact that I had minimized
the importance of prayer, and had been trusting in myself alone to fix any problem instead. If God did not
answer my little short one-way prayer to him right away, I would answer my prayer myself, by doing what I
thought best in my own my own eyes. No wonder I wasn't seeing God manifest his power in my life. "Blessed is he
who waits on the Lord," he says. But I didn't have time to wait for God to answer me. I did not really trust him in
the way he wanted me to, according to his terms. He could see that I was doing this to him, so he finally brought
me to the end of myself after waiting many years patiently for me to see this.
Even as I complained to God in that prayer about my situation at home, he remained patient and faithful to
me. My prayer to him was not reverent and respectful. But finally ended up saying the words God wants to hear:
"God, I need you," even though I did not acknowledge to him how far I had drifted away from him. That's when a
thought seemed to come to me, like "out of nowhere." In myself, I "heard" this thought that clearly said to me,
"I've been waiting for you." That thought actually startled me because is not something you say to yourself.
Suddenly, there was also this overwhelming feeling of peace inside. It felt supernatural, not natural. Why?
Because there was no logical reason for me to suddenly feel that way. After all, everything seemed to be so
upside down and wrong in my family at this moment.
I had never thought of peace as being a power, but this peace knifed through my own feelings of inner despair
and calmed this inner storm that had built up inside of me. You can definitely tell when a storm has suddenly
been calmed within you. There is nothing "mysterious" about that. It is very real. This was not a natural feeling
because my external circumstances and feelings about things had not changed. It felt unnatural, not natural.
The One who is the Prince of Peace had said to that storm, "Peace, be still." I did not start "walking on water,"
like Peter did. I just opened my eyes, and said, "Lord, if this is you, I want to know you again. Just don't leave
me this time." Those were now my thoughts to him. They were certainly coming from me. Now it felt like I was
having a conversation with someone else.
I want to emphasize that God does not call us to be mindless. We are to use our mind to check everything we
think we are hearing from him against his word. We just don't assume that every thought we get is from God. We
are also called to "test the spirits," because Satan is plenty capable of whispering his own thoughts at us. Read
the Bible and pray. Consciously connect with God and then let his Word read you. Ask God for a sign when you
hear something that you think is from him. Many times, he will confirm his word to you with an inner peace that
you know is from him, or he may choose to confirm his word to you by confirming it through a person he uses to
talk with you. At other times, his sign to you may be a door that he suddenly opens up before you. It is likely to
be a door that you never even saw was there. At other times, his sign to you will be something he allows you to
experience, good or bad as it may appear.
Sometimes God chooses to reveal his saving power to others around us by putting us into certain situations
that we need to be saved from. That makes sense, doesn't it? Two of the greatest witnesses to his saving power,
outside of Christ's cross, came from a lion's den of difficulty that Daniel experienced and a fiery furnace trial
that Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednago experienced. From those two extreme hardships, two pagan kings issued
proclamations to the whole known world that no one should worship any god other than the one true, living God
who saved these believers.
If you are thrown into some crisis, know that God has put some "pagan king" around you too, in order to
reveal himself to that person or persons. What our Father wants is for his sons and daughters to wait on him, not
jump up and proactively save themselves instead. Imagine where we would all be today if the first begotten Son
had chosen to proactively save himself from that cross? So for us to instinctively jump up and save ourselves
from particular circumstances, while giving no thought to what God is trying to do through our difficulty, just
destroys the testimony he is trying to create. Think about this. Proactively saving ourselves, without checking
our steps with him, can oftentimes be actual direct disobedience to him.
The world's wisdom says, "Believe in yourself. Believe in your own natural abilities. Trust your own human
instincts." Yeah, but what is God doing in the midst of those circumstances? Do we stop and really ask ourselves
this question? And if we do, do we ask God how he sees things? Did he just create everything, put some natural
laws of the universe in place, wind us up like a top, and set us off spinning, come what may? Dos that even make
any sense? What sovereign Creator would do all of the work of creation and then leave the outcome of his
creation up to chance, fate, coincidence, and luck? The Bible says that God is a God of order, not disorder, so
why would we as Christians think that God doesn't see what's going on?
We see life as a parade that goes by day-by-day, but God sees the entire parade from end to end, all the
time, all at once. At one point, he said to Israel, through one of his prophets, "Am I a God who is only close at
hand? Am I not a God who is also far away at the same time?" That is opposite of the way we oftentimes think
about God, even as Christians. So we say things like, "God, don't you see what's going on? Don't you care?" But he
is trying to say to say to us. "No, you've got it backwards. I am closer to you than your circumstances, and I see
all of your tomorrows at the same time. Listen to me and learn from me."
Even as I was "commanding" God not to leave me, I realized how ridiculous my words to him were. He is so
utterly patient with us. We really are "children" to him. In fact, we are a bunch of rascals sometimes. Imagine
talking to the Creator of the Universe like I was doing, and yet he actually took the time to answer me. Despite
what I accused him of, he had never left me. I had effectively left him...for twenty years. And yet, despite my
years of faithless drifting away from him, he was right there when I called on him. His peace was like being
embraced. I could feel his love and acceptance, although I don't really have words to describe it. It just felt like
waves of love, inner peace, and inner joy all at once. It was his amazing grace, completely undeserved. It was
what the Bible says is "peace that passes all understanding" because it is a sense of peace with God that I had
done nothing to earn.
Then another thought, which sounded like a command, popped into my mind. Again, this
certainly was not my thought because it seemed to come out of nowhere and I would not have originated it.
"Now, go clean your house," said to my mind in a kind of matter-of-fact way. Said to me just like my father
would've said to me about my room as a child, he basically said, "You know what you need to do." Even though I
am now an adult of 53, I didn't know what to do because I still didn't know what he was getting at.
I didn't even know what those words meant at first, but a week or so later I think God helped me to finally
see what he was trying to say intuitively to my spirit. I say "intuitively to my spirit" because the Bible tells us
that God is Spirit and that he has created us with a spirit that can have personal fellowship with him. God is also
love, and he has given us a heart that can sense his love, if we open it up to him by faith. This is why we can
know something intuitively of God before our brain can understand it. As I was reading Billy Graham's book about
God's Holy Spirit, and wondering, "What did God mean by cleaning my house?" a show came on TV. This was one
of those shows where the crew comes over to someone's house to do a makeover of one of the rooms, and the
very first thing they do is take all of the old furnishings out and put them out on the lawn. Everything is
removed, including the carpet. Then they bring all the "new stuff" in. They don't allow the homeowner to keep
any of the old stuff, because what the designer wants to replace it with is much better.
When the crew is done, the home is completely changed and made new from the inside. This is the way God
works in us too. He asks us to make room in our hearts for him because he wants to live his life in us and through
us. From that point on, the homeowners on the TV show live in the changed home. They do not bring back any
of the old stuff because it is all carted away and taken somewhere else. Unfortunately, I had not done this after
God saved me twenty years ago. Instead, I brought back a lot of the "old stuff," such as living and reacting to
circumstances by depending solely on my own natural instincts. I was still trusting only in my own human
abilities alone, rather than fully trusting in the new "stuff" God wanted to fill me with. Spiritually speaking, this
"new stuff" is himself, which is exactly why he unites a believer's spirit in his Spirit (1 Cor. 1:30) as he comes to
dwell in our hearts.
For the past twenty years I had said "yes" to his new covenant way of relationship, which
means living for him by his grace, but then had wandered right back to living under the legalistic way of the old
covenant instead. My Christian walk had become all about my doing of things in the natural for God, instead of
allowing him to do the supernatural through me. In other words, my idea of relationship with God had more to
do with the sacrifices I claimed to be making for him, rather than fully trusting in the sacrifice he had made for
me on the cross. I knew that he had died a substitute death for me, but I didn't grasp that the precious words "in
Christ," which are found throughout the New Testament, means that he wants to also be my substitute life.
As I had tried to live the Christian life by "walking according the flesh" the past twenty years, I thought, "OK,
now my life should become a whole lot easier." Because I had honored him as my Savior, surely his blessings were
right around the corner. Sure enough, my career as a trader succeeded and my income multiplied each year.
Near the end of this twenty year run of prosperity, my wife and I then invested $200,000 in a U.S. private
company. This was basically our life savings at this point. We had already just about paid our home mortgage
off, ten years ahead of schedule. It was right after making the investment in this private company that I had
that encounter with God, where he said "I've been waiting for you" and "Now go clean your house." But here I
was again, just like twenty years earlier, coming to God yet focusing on how much more money we were going to
make through my own human efforts alone.
This new private company had granite quarry mining rights in Brazil, with customers in China who were
interested in buying the 30 ton blocks of stone that we would export to them. I went to Brazil twice and China
once. I visited the quarries in Brazil and met with the factory owner clients in China. The meetings seemed to
be going great and so we began anticipating the high volume of orders that the LLC manager was assuring us of,
especially with all the building construction that was going on in China before the Olympics. I assumed that all
of the investment dividends would start rolling in very soon.
At this time, I heard a few of the popular televangelists speaking about how God promised to keep on
blessing, as long as I "stayed positive and kept praying God's positive blessings on my finances." In fact, some of
these speakers were even "guaranteeing that greater increase would come my way in the upcoming year." It
seemed to make sense because, after all, wasn't the Promised Land that God lead the Israelites into a land that
was "flowing with milk and honey"? Didn't he deliver them out of bondage and slavery in order to lead them into
material prosperity? This is when I wrongly started to ask God, "If you get me out of this mess, then I'll tell
everyone how great you are." It just doesn't work that way with God though. He is not going to do what I ask,
based only on my own terms and conditions to him. He knows exactly what he's doing, so he doesn't need me to
tell him how to be God.
As I was listening to some of those faith in prosperity messages on TV, I was finding myself reading about a
much different Christian life in my Bible. Yes, I read the verses about the "abundant life" that Christ came to
offer, and I read about the "rich blessings" God wants to bestow on those who trust him. But I was also reading
that all of that was possible even through the worst kind of hardship, trials, and testing that God may choose to
allow into a person's life. I read that "it was for joy awaiting him" that Jesus "endured the cross, disregarding its
shame." I also read that Moses, after having dashed God's words to the ground said to God, "If you're not going
into the Promised Land with us, then there's no point in us going." Instead, my Bible told me that Moses set up a
"tent of meeting" outside the camp instead, where he would go in and talk with God. This was his prayer closet.
I don't think that those private conversations were so easy for Moses because when God did invite him to
come back up the same mountaintop, he told Moses to bring up two new clean tablets, "like the ones you
broke." I began to realize that when I read the Bible, I have to let the Bible read me because he inspired all of
Scripture to correct, reprove, and train us in his righteousness. In our own "tent of meeting" prayer closet, God
may have some things to say to us that are not always comfortable for you and I to hear, even though he's
looking to tell us those things for my own good. The Bible says that God spoke to Moses "as one speaks with a
friend." God does love us dearly, but love without discipline is not the love of a Father. God is going to talk to us
honestly about ourselves. Our sins against him are not just waived off. Christ shed blood for every single one of
them that we confess to him. The reason why his shed blood has the power to forgive our sins is because the
Son's blood is so priceless to the Father.
It was at this point that God then took me the way he wanted to lead me. Going completely against what
some of the preachers were saying on TV, he began by allowing much to be taken away. He didn't cause it to be
taken away, because I'm the one who wrote out those investment checks, but he did allow it to happen. He's
God, so he certainly could have spoken a very strong, persistent thought to me that said "You know, you really
shouldn't make this investment." He didn't speak any thoughts to me like that, not because he didn't care, but
because I was not yet checking my steps with him and listening to him.
This free will that God has given us is oftentimes misused by us, no matter how long we may have been a
Christian. God will not impose his will on us. He lets us make choices, to obey his will, or obey our own will
instead. But he will hold us accountable for the choices we make. He tests us with many, many forks in the road
throughout our life. We should see that our free will is a powerful function he gave us because I can exercise my
will to obey his will, above and beyond my feelings, and above and beyond whether my mind fully understands
what God is trying to call me into. When God hears a person say to him, "God, I want to obey your will no matter
what," he knows in that moment that he can entrust his will with that person. Jesus did this in Gethsemane for
us. That prayer closet suddenly became very intense and his flesh tried to asset itself against obeying the
Father's call of self-sacrifice.
The same Jesus who just told his disciples, "I'm going to do this thing," now said, "If there's any other way, let
me do it that way." If God calls you to go back and tell someone about Jesus after that person just ridiculed your
belief and faith last week at lunch in front of some of your co-workers, God is calling you to something that
involves a certain level of self-sacrifice. Your flesh will rise up against this. Everything in you is saying, "Yes,
Lord, I'll do this," but everything in you seems to be also saying, "If there's any other way, let me do it that way
instead." The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak.
To overcome our weak flesh God has given us a free will that can say, "I don't give a hoot about what my
feelings are saying. I want to do your will no matter what." And at that, Jesus was empowered by the Holy Spirit
to do what he was called to do. He allowed himself to be used of the Father to save many, many souls. That is
what God gave us the powerful function of the free will for. It was not given to us so that we use it to do as we
please, or to use it to please God according to what seems best in our own eyes.
Despite my "due diligence," which included visiting the quarries in Brazil and the factories in China, I soon
discovered that we had been defrauded out of our life savings. The LLC manager had gone to China, where he
was to set up a sales office, but he left behind books and records that showed co-mingling and diversion of funds
between his three companies he had established in the U.S. He filed no corporate tax returns, did not file the
state annual registration renewal papers, provided no accounting to me for my invested funds, and then cut off
his Email communications with me altogether. Yet he continued to promote this company from China on his
websites as a "foreign funded enterprise with headquarters in New York." He also continued soliciting more
investment funds from unsuspecting investors.
I went to every U.S. government agency I could, contacted the Chinese bank, and notified the internet
search engines that he was using for his numerous websites. Months of effort to find justice ended in total
futility. Our entire life savings was gone. My Christian walk now completely contradicted what some of the
televangelists were preaching. I discovered this fraud right after that conversation with God had taken place.
Now I had to reconcile this in my mind somehow. Did God see what had happened? Did he really care? According
to some of those "faith prosperity" TV sermons I had heard, God was not blessing me at all. Little did I realize
that God can bless you with what appears to be severe adversity. I stopped listening to those material prosperity
preachers because it was obvious that God had no such man-centered, material prosperity template for the true
Christian life. The truth is that the real math of Christian "greater increase" can be "addition by subtraction" if
God so chooses. My Bible says that God subtracted from David and Joseph's lives for about 14 years each before
they saw any material prosperity. Of course, that would not be a very popular message today.
It was at this point that my wife's mother suffered a serious heart attack, went through a eight hour heart
operation, and was then connected to a ventilator to keep her breathing. Because of the fraud, the collapsing
housing market, and the tightening of bank financing, my own marble and granite factory imploded and had to
be dissolved around the same time. For ten years, many people had borrowed money to buy my products. So
when the home equity lines dried up at the banks, my business quickly failed. I felt like I was sinking into a
whirlpool and for the first time I saw that my natural capacities and abilities alone could not help me. What I
had always depended on seemed to have vanished. Like Peter, as he tried to walk toward Jesus on the stormy
waters, I found myself sinking under the weight of my own fleshly self-efforts. Like him, the faith I had
proclaimed to God in church now seemed to be out of reach. Jesus had said to Peter, "Upon this Rock I will build
my church," but that "Rock" was faith that rested in Christ's faithfulness to Peter, just as our faith has to rest in
Christ's faithfulness to us. It wasn't until Peter sank like a rock, and finally cried out, "Lord, save me," that he
saw what rock Jesus had been actually referring to.
In the weeks when everything seemed to snowball downhill, my wife received a dream. In it, she and I were
standing at the base of the stairs, and suddenly the Bible came tumbling down and opened up at our feet. Then
she received another dream, in which she found herself in the middle of a huge oil refinery, with massive pumps
and pipes all around her. The officers of the company we had invested in were walking around the facility.
When she told me about this, I dismissed it and said to her, "We are invested in a granite quarry business, not a
fuel export business, so this dream you say you had makes no sense to me."
At around this time, the Lord spoke more thoughts into my wife's mind, saying, "This is much bigger then you
can imagine. Be truthful, honest, and clear; and I will be with you." Seven months later, my wife discovered that
the manager of our granite business was now promoting himself as the officer of a huge Brazilian fuel export
company on his Chinese websites. God spoke more thoughts to us, simply letting us know that he sees our whole
situation, even as it pertains to what this crooked LLC manager is doing across the globe. This man had hidden
himself from me in a far off country that has no extradition treaty with the U.S., but as the Bible says, "nothing
is hidden from the eyes of the Lord." He was just helping us to see that he is the God who sees.
When you get thrown into one crisis in life, it's bad enough, but when crisis comes on top of crisis, everything
about you is tested severely. It is in those times of difficulty that we can tend to make life all about ourselves,
instead of all about God's glory. We can start to live by our feelings, forgetting that God's word says to us that
"God is bigger than our feelings." But what God was doing through our circumstances was exactly what he had
already revealed he would do. He drew my wife and I into his Word, put an all-consuming desire into us to feed
on his Word, and opened our eyes to things about himself that we would not have seen if we were not going
through these problems. That's what the dream of the Bible tumbling down those stairs, and opening up in front
of us, meant. He was bringing his word down to us and opening up his heart to us, reminding us that he will
never leave us nor forsake us. He was making his word come alive to us through real life circumstances. I can
know about the truth, and I can even agree with it, but it's not until I actually experience it that I can really
know it in a way that becomes part of me.
God also gave us peace, but it was the peace that he gave to my wife's mother that was amazing. Her
mother's heart operation had been a miracle according to the cardiologists. They explained to me that they had
put up fake synthetic septum walls inside the heart that were like tissue paper. However, they did not
understand how those walls were standing, because there had been no live muscle to suture them to. Not only
that, but they had had to cut away some of the heart, thereby compromising the size of it. When the doctor
told me that there was "no corner and no foundation," I immediately remembered that Jesus is the foundation
and cornerstone of his temple, and his temple today is in our hearts. When I asked the doctor if this was a
miracle, he said, "That is a better explanation than anything I can give you." Months later, the head surgeon
called us and said that, although his hands had performed the procedure, he "had help." Then he said that, yes,
this had certainly been a miracle.
After the operation, one of the doctor's assistants told me that the week immediately after such an
operation is always the most painful time for the patient. However, after that week, a nurse told me that
whenever my mother-in-law was conscious, there was zero pain registering on the full-body pain monitors. This
nurse then said that she had never seen this before. This was a clear answer to my wife's prayer for peace,
which she had prayed in the moment we received that initial phone call about the heart attack. Shaken and in
tears, my wife had prayed, "Lord, we know that you can heal her physically, or you can heal her by taking her
home. But please give her your peace, and please give us your peace too." After that very brief prayer, we
drove to the emergency room in New York City. That simple prayer was answered by God.
For the next year and a half, her mother gradually recovered, to the point where she came off of the
ventilator and was able to begin eating solid food again. But about three months before she passed away, the
Lord spoke his thoughts to my wife again, telling her, "I am going to call your mom home to me peacefully. Stay
with her and comfort her. After she is gone from you, I will give you my peace and you will know that she is with
me." And that is exactly what he did. Three months later, she passed away peacefully one morning.
After this, God began to teach me about his mercy and forgiveness. I was looking for financial restoration at
this point, not a lesson about how to forgive the man who stole our life savings. But God's ways are not my ways.
As I was praying for God to do this thing over here, God wanted to deal with something else over there instead.
He wanted to deal with a certain matter in my heart that much more important to him. Needless to say, my
prayer life with him became somewhat of a wrestling match for quite awhile. Even when I sensed that he
wanted to deal with something other than what I was looking for, I tried many different ways of trying to
negotiate with him. "OK, I'll listen to whatever it is that you want to tell me if you'll do this this thing for me."
He had already taught me about his faithfulness, despite my twenty years of faithlessness and neglect of
him. Now, for almost three years, I had been adding in my forgiveness of the man who had swiped our life
savings to my prayers. But as I was proclaiming my forgiveness of this man to God, I noticed that the pain would
return every time the memory of this man's name would pop back into my mind. So I asked God, "Why I have to
keep living with this hurt and pain? Am I going to have to live with this the rest of my life? I have been forgiving
my enemy, just as you tell us to do."
At that, God spoke his thoughts to me again, by simply putting a picture of Christ on the cross in my mind's
eye. I saw that image but still did not understand what God was getting at. So again, I began to tell him about
the sacrifices I've made, in trying to forgive so-and-so. That is when I got a question in my mind that seemed to
be asking me if I really trusted God to live his life through me. Again. this is not a question that I would ask
myself if it was originating from my own human way of thinking. I said to myself and to God, "Yes, I believe that
God can live his life through me." But then another popped said into my mind that said to me, "I'm not asking
you to forgive this man in your own strength. Let go of your own efforts and just trust me."
I did not really know how this kind of forgiveness would work, but I decided to let go and simply trust God to
forgive this man through me. I said to him, "OK, it is too much for me to do, but I trust that you can do this
through me." That must be music to God's ears because right after that, I realized that whenever the memory of
this man's name would return, the pain wouldn't return together with the memory. God healed me of that pain,
and also protected me from the bitterness returning. No longer did I have to grit my teeth and clench my fists,
as it were, in order to keep proclaiming my own forgiveness of this man to God. No longer did I have keep trying
to bury the pain, and then keep trying to rebury it whenever it resurfaced. I can't tell you in words how much of
a relief it is to be rid of a poison like that, which just keeps eating you up on the inside. Bitterness and
resentment can act like a cancer in your spirit. What God had now done was heart surgery at its best, for my
mother-in-law, for my wife, and for me. Of course, his forgiveness of this man is an offer of forgiveness to him.
This man would have to confess his sin to the Lord at some point, repent of it, and repay what he has stolen.
Only then will this man receive the forgiveness God first offers. But as for me, God's offer of forgiveness to this
man is something I must receive as truth from God. I do not try to block God's offer of forgiveness and salvation
by refusing to pray for this man as God has commanded me to do. The same undeserved, unearned peace with
God "that passes all understanding" is available to this man, just as God made it available to me.
As I was enjoying the freedom and healing of old hurts that wouldn't stop eating away at me, God kept
nudging my heart about forgiveness again. I couldn't put my finger on it, but when I asked him about this
thought that was bothering me, he put an image of himself in Christ on the cross again, saying, "Father, forgive
them for they know not what they do." And with that image, he also opened my eyes to see something amazing
about Jesus. Outside of Jerusalem, he had wept for people who were about to despise him, reject him, and
crucify him. Now on the cross, he was praying for their salvation because sin is what separates us from God.
Jesus was stepping back, and yet standing in the gap, for those who were killing him. He was actually praying
for the Father to forgive them, just as we would pray for someone who is still lost in their sin.
Basically, Jesus was praying "the sinner's prayer" on the behalf of his own killers! He was really praying for
their salvation! He was interceding for them before the Father. I said to God, "You've got to be kidding...You
want me to pray for this guy's salvation now? I don't know how I can possibly do that." At that point, I received
more thoughts that certainly were not mine. He said, "I am not asking you to do this in your own strength and
willpower. Let go and let me do it through you. And by the way, stop telling other people that I'm going to judge
this guy severely for what he has done to you. I love him and died for him too."
Seen from God's perspective in this way, if he commands me to pray for an "enemy," then who am I to say
"no" to God's desire to save someone? I can't make life all about myself and my own feelings. There' a much
bigger picture that God wants us to see and be part of. He wants to expand his Kingdom. At this point, God
spoke more thoughts to my wife and I that said, "I am going to give this man a chance to repent. I am going to
reveal myself to him. But you must pray for this to happen." This is one of the mysteries of prayer, but I have to
always remember that God is the One who invented prayer, not us. It was the Father's will to save Christ's
killers, but even so, Jesus knew to pray for this from the cross. The offer of salvation would be extended to
the people who had nailed Jesus to that cross, but they would have to make a choice at some point whether or
not to receive the offer. His grace is there for us in those outstretched nail-pierced hands. We just have to
choose to receive this unearned gift from him.
Because of the hardship we were experiencing, and because financial fraud causes a terrible domino effect
to happen afterward, I revisited the book of Job in the Bible. After battling with his own emotions, through
great afflictions, Job was told by God at the end of the ordeal to pray for his friends, even though they had done
nothing but accuse him of hiding sin that they felt invited God's punishment of him. God did not tell Job, "OK,
now you can go ahead and pray for my positive blessings on your finances." With that prayer of intercession for
his accusing friends, God heard Job's prayer and then restored Job. So it is not surprising that God has taken my
wife and I through this revelation of forgiveness at this point, and now told us to pray for this man who has
wronged us. It is the same thing he did with Job at the end.
Since opening my eyes to his power to forgive and heal, God has brought people across my path people who
are also going through struggles with bitterness, resentment, lack of forgiveness, hardship, and pain. In sharing
what God has shared with me, some of these people have cried, hugged me, and said, "Thank you so much. I
really needed to hear this. This is the answer to my struggle and pain. I knew this, but I guess I needed to hear it
from someone who has gone through what I'm going through now." God has a strange way of qualifying us to
speak to others about him. And as they hear what God has done during our troubles, I can sense that they are
wondering to themselves, "If God can do that for him, I wonder what God can do in my life."
At this point, I see that God has revealed how faithful he is through my times of faithlessness. He has
revealed the depth of his mercy and forgiveness, even through my own futile attempts to forgive someone else
in my own human strength. Sure, I can forgive someone, but I cannot be relieved of the pain if the hurt is too
deep. That's where bitterness, resentment, and unforgiveness begins to take root and fester. It's like a cancer
that eats away on the inside, and things like cancer are not something I can heal myself of through my own
efforts to self-will it away. Cancer, or anything else that eats away at us like that, is something we need help to
be rid of. God has shown me how he is willing and able to heal me of old pain and hurt that I could not heal
myself of, no matter how much I tried to will myself to do so. He has given us his true, deep inner peace right
through three years of suffering from external circumstances. That is supernatural, not natural. He has given my
wife and I his joy, not mere fleeting moments of happiness that come and go depending on our feelings from one
day to another. He has allowed us to sleep at night, taken away anxiety and stress whenever it has risen up to
the point of overwhelming us, protected our kids, and has kept our family together. It has not been a walk in the
park, and there has been plenty of stumbling in faith on our part, but God has not stumbled at all. He has picked
us up every time we have fallen down in our own weaknesses and emotions. Fraudulent theft is a terrible crime,
especially at the hands of someone you have known for a number of years. A financial crime like this is not easy
to just disengage yourself from because it entangles you in a cobweb of difficulties that cause more difficulties
on top of difficulties. Foreclosure and ruined credit do affect your ability to get a job in many places, especially
in any area of finance, which is what my entire occupational background had been in.
At times, I have come to God honestly and said, "You know, this whole mess is really unfair. You ask me to
come to you with my doubts, but the truth is that my doubts are about you. Don't you see what we're going
through? Don't you care?" In effect, I have been acting like that man who came to Jesus and said, "Yes, I do
believe, but help me with my unbelief." And it's in those moments of bitter complaining to him that his thoughts
to me and say, "I know it's tough, but keep on running." So then I've said to him, "Yeah OK, but I don't think I can
take much more of this." And he says to me with "foreign" thoughts that I know are obviously not initiated by
me, "Yeah I know, but as you're telling me this, keep on running. Keep on praying. I've already told you that this
is an endurance race."
At first, I struggled with these words from him, but I see it is the same way he talked to an exasperated
Jeremiah when he said to his young prophet, "If racing against mere men makes you tired, how will you race
against horses?" (Jeremiah 12:5). God then told Jeremiah to speak whatever he told him to speak, otherwise
God would thoroughly embarrass Jeremiah before other people. Everything that God calls us to do for him is too
much for us to do on our own, which is exactly why he's not asking us to do it in and of ourselves. Even if we
think we are perfectly capable of doing this thing or that thing that God has called us to do, our dependency on
our natural abilities alone is not pleasing to him. We have to be open to whatever he wants to do through us,
whenever he wants to do it. There's a much bigger picture that goes way beyond us and our own human
abilities, yet includes us.
In the early stages of this three year trial, I would say, "God, when you get us out of this and restore us,
then I'll tell everyone how great you are." However, it just doesn't work that way with God, because I'm basically
agreeing to obey his command to be a witness for him on my own terms. On the way to the cross, Jesus said to
his disciples, "What should I pray, Father get me out of this, or Father get glory out of this?"
What I have done with this website is make my life an open book for people to see that, despite hardships
that want to take our emotions from one extreme to the other, God has the power to set us on a rock of
stability. That Rock is Christ. It is not Peter, not our own proclamations of faith to God, and not whoever the
present Pope is. The Rock is the One who Peter said his faith was in.
If you are facing a difficult circumstance now, and you are a Christian, know that God is testing you, in order
to strengthen your trust in him, not to just see whether you will pass or fail his test. The Bible compares his
"testing" of us as to the testing of metal, which refines and strengthens the metal by purifying it of impurities.
Metals are tested in order to strengthen them so that they can be useful instruments in the hands of the One
who knows how best to use them. In other words, there's a purpose in the testing. It's not just a test to see if we
can hang onto our faith and salvation, as though it might leak out of some hole in our pocket that we weren't
aware of. The name "Jesus" means "God is salvation," and because you have been put in Christ, the One who is
salvation holds onto you in his hands. Know that God is walking you through that difficulty, and that he has a
purpose in what you are experiencing. His purpose goes ways beyond your external circumstances. It affects the
eternal destiny of those he has put around you to witness his power to save. Through your trying circumstances,
he's trying to reveal himself to others. The worst thing you can do is jump up and proactively save yourself,
because this destroys the testimony to his saving power that he's trying to create. It is exactly the reason why
Jesus did not call down a legion of angels to save himself from the cross, even though everyone was telling him
to do that. For God to reveal his saving power to others, he sometimes has to allow you or I to be put into
situations that we need to be saved from. Look at what Peter said to Christians who were under severe
pressures:
1 Peter 4:12-16 "Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal that is taking place among you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice insofar as you are suffering Christ's sufferings...you are blessed because the Spirit of glory is resting on you...Yet if any of you suffers as a Christian, do not consider it a disgrace, but glorify God because you bear his name."
My wife has now become a certified nurse's aid, and she is helping people in a nursing rehabilitation center,
just like people helped her mom while she was recovering. The Lord spoke more thoughts to my wife recently
that said, "This job is my ministry to you. It is to show you the process of dying, and the decay of the human
body. This chapter of financial hardship in your life is coming to an end soon. I promise. I have collected all of
your tears. I will bring justice and I will restore you. My purpose through all of this is to save many lives. Pray for
that man's salvation. In the meantime, my command to you is: Love, love, love." Like he said from the very
beginning, "This is much bigger than you can imagine." It goes way beyond us, yet includes us.
My wife and I have not known everything that God has been up to during the past three years as we have
been going through these difficulties. But in the past month he has revealed a lot of his reasons for allowing
these things to happen. He said that he is going to use me to speak to people who have been hard hit by
financial troubles and are feeling like they are losing hope. He wants to use me to help them see that he is their
only real hope, and he said that they will only be willing to listen to me because I have experienced what they're
experiencing. "I allowed this to happen to your husband because I am going to use him to help others. He is
going to tell them that he lost everything and did not know what to do. But then he is going to tell these people,
'God saved me from that mess, and he can save you too.' I've allowed this in order that he may have credibility
with them." God certainly has his own strange way of qualifying us to represent him sometimes.
God has also made something clear to me, as to why he is allowing these circumstances to be prolonged for a
little while longer in our own life than I'd like them to be. Recently, he spoke his thoughts to my wife about me.
He said, "Your husband has been going around in circles with me. Although he has responded to me when I've
called him into my Word, and I have revealed much to him, he is not listening to me the way I want him to. He
will never be able to figure me out just from reading my Word. He must return to praying in childlike faith to
me, and listen to me because I have much to tell him. I cannot open the door for him to go through until he does
this." I've been so caught up in writing that I didn't even realize that I was doing this to him. But my prayers had
become very short one-way messages to him. My wife didn't know this, but God...and so did I. At first, I felt
somewhat offended that he had told my wife this and not me. But telling my wife instead of me did actually
make a lot of sense because I wasn't really listening to him. God is smart enough to know that my wife has her
own ways of getting my attention, even when he can't seem to.
When my wife first told me that message from God, I was embarrassed and reacted a little defensively, but
she said to me, "No, this is awesome. Just the fact that he says he wants to use you in his plans is great." She's
right, because once again, I cannot make life all about myself and my own feelings. There is a much bigger
picture, "bigger than anything we can imagine," he had said. Despite all of my times of faithlessness, and despite
the crime that was committed against us, I could still say, "Great is his faithfulness." And at this point, he has
made me see that it would be irrational for me to believe that God could not save this man, even after what
this man has done to us. God's call on our life is to pray for others, no matter what. Jesus' life was, and still is, a
life of prayer. And "as he is, so are we in this world" (1 John 4:17). Nothing is impossible for God to do through
those who pray to him.
What God has shown me through our hardship is that he is willing and able to manifest himself to us and
through us, if we are willing to humbly seek his living presence, and allow him to correct, discipline, and change
us according to his wisdom. The Lord looks at the heart, the Bible says. It is our hearts that he is after, first and
foremost, because more than anything else, he's looking to have a heart-to-heart personal relationship with us.
People have somehow given religion a meaning that defines it as set of rules and principles we must adhere our
lives to. But the true definition of religion comes from the two Latin root words, "re" and "ligare,' which mean
"to reconnect" and "to bind together." He reconnected with us through his redemption of us on the cross, and his
bond with us is love because God is love. To "reconnect" and "bind together" means personal relationship with
him. Some people say they are saved, yet they have no real interaction with their god, and they do not have
real conversations with him. But hearing his voice is the acid test of whether or not something is really
"religion." If a person prays and pleads with their god to answer, and he doesn't answer, he does not exist. You
don't believe me? Demand that this god answer you, and then listen. If he cannot even answer you, or he refuses
to answer you, then how can you trust him with your life and eternal destiny? Put "him" to the test.
I have seen that if I come to God in prayer and complain to him about how someone has wronged me,
he will basically remind me that he is not my gossip partner. Like a doctor who pulls out his stethescope, the
first thing God does is to listen to what is going on in my heart first. He would not reconcile Esau to Jacob until
God first reconciled Jacob to God. We cannot come to God on our own terms, with our own human
perceptions of him, and with preconceived ideas or pretenses. We cannot say that we are "saved" if we are not
saved by the God who only saves people from his righteous judgment against sin. Unfortunately, many religions
and man-made philosophies don't even acknowledge that sin exists.
In every other "religion," the leader or prophet did not claim to be God, or even claim to be from God. Only
Jesus Christ made that claim. None of them had the power to forgive sins. They could not even perform a
miracle. All of those men died, and they are still dead.
Because Christ claimed to be God, and claimed to be the only way to the Father, he offended many people
who wanted to find enough goodness in and of themselves to earn salvation. They refused to believe that Jesus
was God in Christ. Despite that opposition and persecution, he rose again and offered us the gift of salvation in
himself. What other "god" has done anything even close to this for us? They cannot even talk and have any kind
of conversation with us today...because they do not even exist. Put any of these "gods" to the test. Demand that
they answer you. Then demand the God who actually created you to answer you.
The only true living God is the One who says to all of us, "Call on me and I will answer you." Put all
theology, doctrine, and philosophy aside. Sure, it has it's place, but it is not salvation, in and of itself. "This is
eternal life, " Jesus said, "that you know me." To know someone means that I have to spend time with that
person. Having theology, doctrine, and philosophy down pat won't matter when we stand before his judgment
seat. He does not say that he will test our mental knowledge. He will only ask, "What did you do with my
Son? What did you do when I came to you personally in Christ and in my Spirit? Did you really receive me and
give me my rightful place in your heart, and in every area of your life, or didn't you?" He will already know the
answer to this because he will either see himself in us or he won't. What will matter to him is whether or not
we've opened up our hearts to trust him enough to hear his voice and obey him. Nothing else matters to
him as much as this does.
Other than Christianity, no other "religion" has a living God who invites us to personally speak with him. The
other "religions" and philosophies are all very vague about who or what God is. Some of them teach that God is
everywhere and in everything, that he can be found in every religion and philosophy that have been developed
by people. God is not found everywhere in every religion because he says he isn't. He is found in his church,
through his Son, Jesus Christ. As believers, he tells us that we are his temple, both individually and collectively
as his church body. He yearns to dwell in the hearts of his people. He says that he is found in broken, contrite
hearts of people, and that he "inhabits the praises of his people." In other words, we find God in true worship of
him. True worship worships God on his terms, according to his wisdom. When we worship him, he then speaks to
us directly and personally. Of course, God is also found on his throne in heaven.
Ephesians 1:20-23 "God put this power to work in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated
him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and
above every name that is named, not only in this age but in the age to come. And he has put all things
under his feet and has made him the head over all things for the church, which is his body, the fullness of
him who fills all in all."
He wants to be "all" in the affections of our heart. "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul,
mind, and strength." He wants to be "all" in every area of our life. "Listen to me, obey my voice, and walk only
in the ways I command you...so that it may go well for you."
