I have been asked to share a testimony, and I have several things to share—not just about when the Lord saved me, but some other things as well.
This conference has been unique. Two years ago, we had a conference here in our home, and it was a delight. My favorite part of the conference, literally, was just being here and taking the trash out. We had a lot of trash at the conference two years ago, and this year we have done a little bit better. There is not quite as much, but a little bit later, we will make a run to my office, where we will sort of hide it away in the dumpster. I got permission, since I am the boss.
I had a unique experience at the conference, by the way. This has never happened to me before. We talk about one member suffering and all the members suffering, and Anna stubbing her toe. That is probably the most common thing in life—stubbing your toe or jamming your finger in something.
Well, I was playing basketball during the break, and I had never played against somebody with high heels before. She came down on my little pinky toe. So I am suffering a bit up here, but we will get through.
Now, I am not really sure why I was asked to speak. Seriously, when we started having meetings about the conference, it got practical about who was going to speak. Sonny was going to speak, and then Matt and Kit, and then Chip, and so-and-so was going to speak twice. We started adding up the times, and there kept being this insistence that I give my testimony.
At least in one meeting, I was trying to subtly pull my name out of the hat so others could share, but I was not successful. One of the things I learned when I was young was this: my parents would have friends over about every other week, and I would be down the hallway listening to them talk. I was always turned off by friends of my parents who were loud and boisterous, took up all the air in the room, and talked all about themselves.
There is a real reluctance to do that. In fact, when I was first a Christian, I shared my testimony often, but I have hardly shared it since then. Of course, our testimony, if it is a real testimony, is not merely a testimony of what happened back then, but of what is happening today.
So I am going to weave it back and forth a bit, but it is going to be personal. It is very important.
I noticed, when I was sitting next to Sonny in the back, that every time one of the brothers was sharing, he was crossing things out, erasing, or underscoring, because he had a lot of the same Scriptures. Much of what Kit just shared had a lot to do with the beginning of what I wanted to share.
I am just one member of the body. My testimony is exactly the same as your testimony when it comes to Jesus Christ being my Savior, and when it comes to being a partaker of His body and His blood. When we break bread tomorrow, those who are still in town will pass that bread and that cup. We have that in common.
But the manifestation of my testimony is distinctly unique. There will never be another one like it. Star differs from star in glory. If we had a clear night, we would go out and I would point out the stars to you. Saturn, Venus, and Jupiter have been playing tag with the moon in a rather unique pattern lately.
When you look at the way things are, each one of us is unique. So when you hear what I say and you say, “Well, I am stirred up by that,” that is the way it is supposed to be. As Kit was doing the thing with the arms, exactly that is taking place. He is pulling one way, I am pulling the other way, but if we do it right, we get the full expression of the body of Christ.
As I said, I am not sure why I was asked to do this. I am not an apostle, prophet, evangelist, or pastor-teacher. I am just a brother, and I have lots of quirks. You can ask my children who are in the room, or my wife, who has lived with me all these years.
The thing that I think we all have in common is the Scripture I want to read from 2 Corinthians 8:9. You can turn there if you want to. It is a very simple Scripture, and it is very much in line with what Kit was just saying.
For ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that, though He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor, that ye through His poverty might become rich.
That is my testimony. I am utterly poor, utterly impoverished, utterly destitute, utterly without hope in this world. The One who has all life and light and everything gave up all that He had, and through His poverty I become rich.
Now, not rich according to man’s riches. You might say, “Well, what kind of house is this, anyway? Somebody must have treasure.” Well, I can assure you, the treasure is not mine. I do not own anything. I gave that up a long time ago. I will tell you about that. I possess nothing, and yet, possessing nothing, possess everything.
In about eleven days, I will have been married twenty-five years to the same wonderful wife, and I have five great children. There are pictures on the wall, but you have gotten to know most of them. I am a brother in the house of God who is committed to what the Lord has.
There are a lot of things in my life. Some days I am hot, some days I am cold, some days I am mad, and some days I am happy. In fact, I spend a lot more days unhappy. It is just my personality type. I am more on the lugubrious side, like Eeyore. A friend of mine gave me that word back in college. He called me lugubrious—someone who is despondent. You are lugubrious at funerals.
But I am committed to what the Lord has. I believe the Lord has shown me just a little bit of what He has, and I am committed to that.
Let me give you an example of my commitment. About three months ago, in this room, when the couches were in and the chairs were out, a man flew to Memphis and sat down with me. He said, “I have gotten phone calls from people around the country, and we believe that you are the best person in the United States to take this job—to run this six-hundred-million-dollar business.”
As Sonny was talking about that million-dollar offer, I can guarantee you that the numbers they threw at me were significant. We sat down and talked. I did this more out of courtesy, because many people said they really wanted me, but it was not in Memphis, Tennessee.
He said, “By the way, this thing will be over a billion dollars in a few years. You will have eleven hundred people working for you now, but it will become about fifteen hundred. We are going to do this, this, this, and this.” They meant what they intended to do.
I told him, “As I promised the Lord years ago, if He ever allows me to have any prominence or publicity, I will always talk about Him. I do not care about the consequences. If I ever go into a job interview, right out of the shoot I am going to tell them that I believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and I am committed to Him.”
So I told this man that, and I shared the gospel with him. Did I have some thoughts, desires, and interests? Well, yes. Actually, when he said, “You are the best person in the country for this job,” I knew that. Forgive me, but there was no one who knew exactly what they needed better than me.
He opened a book and said, “I am going to describe what it takes to do this position.” He went item by item—forty or fifty items—and then asked, “Is there anything on there that does not describe you?” I said, “No. It all describes exactly my personality and what you want.”
I took him out to Corky’s Barbecue. We had ribs, and then he went on his way. They followed up and asked whether I was going to come meet with all the people because they wanted to get this done.
I called them back and said, “I am really sorry, but the Lord has not told me that I am free to go. I am staying right where I am.”
That does not mean I am having a worse life. In one sense, it is funny—I want my best life now, if you know what I mean: the life of the Lord Jesus. I want my best life now, step by step and every day until eternity. The best life now is not the fact that you own something, have riches, or have success. You can be content in whatever state you are.
I am going to tell you that when I was making pizzas, when I worked on Wall Street, and when I went to the White House, you can be anywhere as long as you choose to be His servant.
I have a day job. I run about nine companies, depending on the count. Several of them are multi-million-dollar companies in the area of health care. But if you had explained my current life to me on October 3, 1982—married, five children, running nine companies, earning two million dollars a year, and having five hundred employees—I would have said, “Let’s get in the car. Let’s go downtown to the Hernando DeSoto Bridge. Stop in the middle of the bridge, and then you just keep driving, because I am leaping.”
I say that because that is what I would have thought. Goodness gracious. When the Lord saved me, I was on a pathway. I was on the highway to hell, but I thought I was on the highway to heaven on earth.
There was so much in me that needed to be shaken. We are reading about Him shaking all things. If I had been given anything more than a paper route, I could not have handled it. My first job after I became a Christian was making pizzas. That was about all I could handle.
The Lord, over time, has changed me. Most of the time, I realize, “Lord, I am no different. I am no different.” It is there. I am the same person, but I really want sweetness to come out when I get squeezed. I do not want those bitter things to come out.
There are some of you with bigger challenges. We have a brother who is an assistant district attorney in the Bronx. Having grown up in New York, the thought of being an assistant district attorney in the Bronx is about the last place in the world I would want to be one. We have another brother, Michael Berman, who is about to go into the Air Force. People are facing things that are unique and challenging, and I think each of us finds the Lord in the circumstances we are in.
Someone might ask, “What has changed?” I ask myself, “What has changed from the guy who was saved as a basket case?” I was literally sucking my thumb. I was afraid to go to bed at night. I was so desperate.
The Lord spoke to me. Shortly after I became a believer, after the glow of salvation began to fade, I began to meet myself. You begin to think, “Oh my, if You had just taken me home in the first week or two after I became a believer.” But the Lord leaves you here because you are on a trip of discovery.
One of the things I discovered was Psalm 13. I was on my knees seeking the Lord because I was in so much turmoil.
How long, O Lord? wilt Thou forget me for ever?
How long wilt Thou hide Thy face from me?
How long shall I take counsel in my soul,
Having sorrow in my heart daily?
How long shall mine enemy be exalted over me?
The Lord spoke to me in a flash. He said, “That is your problem. You are taking counsel in yourself. I am showing you something about yourself, and you are parking there and trying to fix yourself. Just give it to Me.”
There was a liberating thing that happened in my life when that happened. The Lord spoke to me.
Another verse He spoke to me was 2 Timothy 1:7.
For God gave us not a spirit of fearfulness;
But of power and love and discipline.
That word “power” is dunamis—dynamite. Some translations say “discipline,” but what I needed to hear was “a sound mind,” because I can promise you that this mind was unsound. I had lived twenty-three and a half years in the world. Though I had grown up in a good family, this mind was fully programmed as a card-carrying citizen of this world and was unsound in all its thinking.
When I realized that the Lord had given me, in Christ, a sound mind, I stood on that, and my life was changed.
What else caused me to change? I remember when I was first a believer, I came into the family of God and began looking around. I thought, “You know what I need, Lord? I need an older sister who prays for me every day.”
I began to realize that there were older sisters who prayed every day, and they were the effective, fervent ones. In fact, all the rest of us were just window dressing. They were the ones carrying the burden.
I had in my mind what that older sister would look like. She would have been a missionary in the Philippines, Papua New Guinea, or somewhere like that. She would have come back and been in retirement, though not retired, because once you have given your life to the Lord, you never retire from being a Christian or a disciple.
Well, I was given an older sister to pray for me, and she fit none of the template I had in mind. But I can tell you, from the day that sister started praying for me, things happened in my life that changed my life.
What else caused the change? There is an interesting Scripture right at the beginning of the Bible. Adam experienced loneliness. The Lord said, “It is not good that the man should be alone,” so He allowed Adam to have some fellowship with loneliness.
The Lord allowed Adam to look at, name, and have some fellowship with the animals. We have fellowship with animals—cats, dogs, and other critters—but we do not have the kind of fellowship that answers to our face.
That is what it says in the original Hebrew: the Lord makes one suitable for us who answers to our face. The Lord has given me a wife who will not let me simply go along with my own pathway.
I have this maverick personality. It is just, “We are going to run it down. It does not matter.” She reminds me on about an hourly basis: “This is how the road is. There is a double line, and then there is the shoulder. Normal people drive between the double line and the shoulder. They stay on the road.”
She answers to my face, and she has made my life all the more better. If it were not for the Lord Jesus, I would have been dead long ago. If it were not for my wife, I would be nothing.
What else has changed? Many brothers and sisters have shown me a more excellent way. There was a time in my life when I was shipwrecked, and the brothers and sisters carried me.
They did not ask any hard questions. They did not tell me, like Job’s friends, “What did you do wrong?” They knew the Lord was doing something, and it was inexplicable. No one knew exactly what was going on. I did not know what was going on. They did not know what was going on.
But they loved me no matter what. They carried me and kept me. They would come and sit with me, but they did not sit with me like Job’s friends. They sat with me like brothers and sisters—not asking questions, not telling me what I needed to do. They just loved me.
What else caused me to change from that person who only knew how to make pizzas? Barely that, by the way. The way I met my wife was that she was working there too. We both would share the Lord with people. I was a new believer, and I thought you should just tell everybody about the Lord. Of course, you really should, but in an appropriate way.
One night, I took a pizza out of the oven, cracked it off the pan like you are supposed to, and then picked up the pan with my bare hand. I burned it tremendously badly—almost a third-degree burn. She was a nurse in training, took care of my hand, and the rest is history.
There was another sister who took care of me and said, “When are you going to get baptized?” I said, “Baptized? Why do I have to get baptized?” She said, “Because if you are going to be the Lord’s and follow Him, you need to be baptized.”
I did not sit around and wait until I had an emotional high to get baptized, or wait until I had the right feeling. She told me, and I did it because she was my sister in Christ. I give the Lord a lot of credit for that. I was in that dumb-enough stage where I actually listened to my brothers and sisters rather than thought I knew more than they did.
Then there was the Saturday morning brothers’ meeting in the dark that I would go to. I am a person with night vision, as my wife can tell you. I do not mind turning out all the lights and walking through the house while she is stumbling along, wondering what I have done to her.
But I would stumble into this meeting. I was a brand-new believer, and I heard brothers praying prayers. I said, “I want to be like these brothers.” I saw what the priestly ministry—or at least this aspect of the priestly ministry—was in reality.
It was not beating people over the head with the Word of God. It was not trying to straighten out this brother or that brother. It was going before the throne of grace and saying, “Lord, who am I? I do not have anything better than this brother or sister, but this brother or sister is in need.”
“Lord, we face this situation, and like Moses and Aaron, we fall on our faces before You and look for Your wisdom.”
These are some of the things that taught me. Before I go back to my earlier life, let me say there are a couple of other things I learned right away in the early days of being a Christian.
I found out that the church is a threshing floor. The house of God is a place where the wheat and the chaff are separated. After a while, you realize that it is not the wheat and chaff in your brothers and sisters—it is you.
Like Jacob said in the vision he had with angels ascending and descending, “This is a dreadful place. This is the gate of heaven. This is the house of God.” You think, “Ooh, can I get out now?”
I watched a brother die—physically die—because, in the house of God, he was taking the Lord’s table and not discerning the body rightly. These were in the first two or three years after I became a believer.
I watched a sister who refused to repent of a certain sin have a stroke and die in her late thirties. The Lord is serious. He is transforming us from the earthly to the heavenly.
At some point, He says, “You have to be grown up now. You want to drive a car? There are rules to the road here. You cannot just do it your way. You want to be grown up? Maturity carries responsibility.”
When you break the bread on Sunday morning and look across the room, if there is an issue or you are having problems with brothers, these are not light things. Forgiveness needs to flow.
I saw two brothers separate, and I was working for one of them. He was no longer meeting with the saints. I was living through this, and I was in my imaginations, trying to imagine that perhaps this really was not as it appeared to be. I hoped it was just a tiff.
But this was a deep thing. Every time anyone tried to take a step to move closer, it was like they were on ice and the ice was cracking worse. Everyone was trying to do the right thing, but it never got rectified or resolved on this side of heaven.
You find the difficulty of being in a place with brothers and sisters. Then I began to realize that my motives were coming to the surface, along with selfish ambitions.
James 3:16 says:
For where jealousy and faction are, there is confusion and every vile deed.
I remember the first time I read that, and I was pricked. I said, “No, Lord, You did not really mean confusion and every evil thing. You just meant a little confusion and maybe a little bit of evil.” But the Word of God is the Word of God.
I was a Wall Street guy. I worked on a hundred political campaigns. I was going to take the world by storm, and I was beginning to realize there was envy, selfish ambition, anger, and murder in my heart.
After a few years, I realized that the issues of my life were not my wife, for those who think their wife is the problem. It was not my children, though they may manifest some of your best qualities. It was not my job. It was not George Bush or Barack Obama. They were not the problem.
The problem is the “I” in me—the self that the Lord is dealing with.
Let me go back to my time before coming to know the Lord. I was born in New York and grew up in the New York City metropolitan area. I had wonderful parents. In fact, I have never seen my parents do anything wrong, which is hard to imagine because they are not believers.
I have never seen them lie, cheat, wrong anyone, or fail to make the choice that seemed to be the right choice to make.
My dad was from a Jewish family. His father escaped the Russian pogroms and came to America through Ellis Island. His mother escaped from Poland, right before the czars took over. They probably would not have survived that.
My mother was Catholic. When they got married in the 1950s, it was unheard of for a Jew to marry a non-Jew. It was so unheard of that my dad’s parents, who were gracious and generous people, would not speak to them for a couple of years.
One day, it dawned on my grandfather—my father’s father—that Nancy was really Jewish anyway. Suddenly, she was welcomed back into the family. In other words, she behaved like a good American Jew.
If you have moved in Jewish circles, you understand there is something about the Jewish people. Go to a synagogue sometime when they stand up and sing Psalm 133 together and put their arms around each other. They know they are a family. When one suffers, all suffer.
There was a battle going on at that time. The Israelis had moved into Gaza. The whole Jewish world was watching it. There is a connectivity among them, and with the body of Christ, there is a connectivity one with another.
But my parents were humanistic, lukewarm, and compromised. Our lives were counterfeit. We were good Americans, but we did not really have anything to live for.
When I was about twenty, I went to my dad and said, “It seems like everything in life, you just fake your way through it.” He said, “Well, that is sort of about what it is.” A lot of the world really is a bait-and-switch game.
Everything seemed to be okay in our family, but we had no anchor. Things went along fine until two things converged at the same time: the 1960s and teenagehood. Those two things caused a crisis in my family.
I had an older sister, and her life went off the rails. I had a brother who got into drugs and other things, and his life went off the rails. I looked around and thought, “I do not want to get into drugs. I am not going to get off the rails. I am going to do it right.”
I decided I would go through high school and work, then go to college and get through in four years. Then I might go on to law school or do something else, but I was going to get it right.
So, lo and behold, that is essentially what I did. I worked a job in high school, went to school, did other things, avoided drugs and alcohol for the most part, and went off to college. I actually had a very successful college life. Everything was great.
Then I graduated. If you think the economy is bad now, go back to 1980. The economy was very difficult. I could not find a job out of college.
Eventually, I landed a job. I went to an interview where seven hundred people had been interviewed. An executive for a Wall Street bank said, “You are the first person in three days to come in here who knows what they are talking about.” He hired me, and I began to work on Wall Street.
My dad worked for a bank near Wall Street, so it was not altogether outrageous. My new life began. Every morning, I would get on the train, ride down to Hoboken, New Jersey, take the PATH train to the World Trade Center, walk up the escalators outside the World Trade Center, pass Burger King, walk past Merrill Lynch, go down Church Street, and arrive at One Wall Street. That was where I worked.
I started going to business school at New York University, and the bank was paying for it. Then a friend and I decided we did not have enough to do, so we opened a financial consulting business. We started looking at buying seats on the New York Stock Exchange or the New York Futures Exchange.
At the same time, I was running political campaigns for candidates, including a lieutenant governor and United States senators from New York. I had worked on the 1980 presidential election. I had my life in order—or so I thought.
But something was going on. I cannot describe it any other way: there was a gnawing inside of me. Every night when I went to bed, I would lie down and think, “I just hope when I wake up that my whole life is a dream.”
This went on for about a year. When I would walk the streets of New York, going to school and taking subways and buses, there were no smartphones or BlackBerrys. If you wanted to use a phone, you went to a phone booth.
Every phone booth in New York had the same design at that time: a black phone and a thick metallic steel part where the money was kept because there were thieves. Every phone I went to for a year and a half had one thing engraved on it: “Worship God.”
It was right there on every one of them. Every time I put the quarter in and dialed the phone, it said, “Worship God.” That was straight out of the book of Revelation.
In January 1982, our brother Doug Alt, who lives in Memphis and whose house we will meet in tomorrow, was at my parents’ house. Doug and I had grown up in the same neighborhood in Monsey, New York.
He was about to go to Israel with his wife and daughter. We spent the evening together—my brother, his brother, Doug, and me. We went down to Manhattan, to the World Trade Center, then to Tremont Street in the Bronx and Frank’s Pizza Place, which had the best pizza.
Then we went our separate ways. He was on his way to Israel, and I was on my way where I thought I knew I was headed.
A month later, I was on a business ski trip in Colorado. I was lying down and realized, “Something is really wrong here. Something is really not right here.”
I thought maybe a new job would make the difference, so I changed jobs. It only got worse. Within two months, I was barely able to get out of bed. The Holy Spirit began bringing conviction upon my soul in a manner I cannot explain.
Everything in my life, from the time I was conscious—even memories from when I was two years old—came up. Over every one of them came the word: “Guilty. Guilty. Sin. Sin.”
This went on for months. My whole life was being relived. Then I began to see that demons were trying to destroy me. If that was not enough, I began to have apocalyptic visions of the end of the world.
In the middle of all this, as I was drooling through life, my mother was convinced that here we go again. My sister had gone off the rails, my brother had gone off the rails, and now it was my turn. It just took me a little longer.
They lined me up to see a psychologist. I explained what was going on. I said, “I am beginning to think that God is interested in convicting me of my sin, and Satan is trying to destroy me.” These were thoughts I had never had in my life up to that point.
The psychologist said, “Let me take you in to see the psychiatrist.” I explained it to the psychiatrist, and they both looked at me and said, “We hear this all the time.” I looked them both in the eyes and said, “You hear it all the time because it is true.”
They wrote a prescription, and I decided to take it. What else could I do at that point?
All this began to culminate in two things that happened that summer. In June, the Israelis went into Lebanon. I do not know how I knew it, and remember, I was not a believer, but something told me this was important and had something to do with the end of the world.
Then I went with some friends onto the Hudson River, where we were water-skiing. At that point, I was gasping for spiritual air. I would try to be with people, even for a minute, because I was under such emotional pressure.
We were on the Hudson River, south of the Bear Mountain Bridge and toward the Tappan Zee Bridge. I believe we were between the Tappan Zee Bridge and the George Washington Bridge. I may have been driving the boat, but I do know someone was water-skiing behind us who is now the mayor of the town where I grew up.
I looked down toward Manhattan, and suddenly the heavens opened. I saw that Jesus Christ was seated on the throne of heaven.
At that moment, whatever I was doing, I collapsed because my breath was taken away from me. In all His power, glory, and majesty—as much as one could perhaps see—the heavens were opened, and there was Jesus Christ.
I thought, “This is the end.” I thought He was coming in His power and glory, and I did not know Him. That was it. My heart stopped, as best as I could tell. I do not know what happened. All I know is that I was as a dead man.
But I knew I was not saved at that point. I survived that journey. I do not think anyone else knew what happened, because I did not share it with anybody. I was terrified to share it with anyone.
Then the Holy Spirit began reminding me of brothers along the way who had shared the gospel with me: the Alt family, a friend in my college astronomy class, a man at a campground in upstate New York who handed me a gospel tract, Vera Leggett at the bank, Pete Gaspero, and others.
Suddenly, I said, “This is the answer: Jesus Christ. I need to come to know Him.”
I sought counsel and prayed. I was given a Gideons Bible, and I carried it everywhere. I would not let go of that Bible. I kept reading, though the emotional pressure was so great that I had to hold it tightly because of the tension I was under.
I began memorizing Scriptures to the best of my ability. Anytime oppression came on me, I would go to the Word of God and read it, say it, pray it, or whatever. The Lord brought a little relief, but overall it only got worse—the conviction and everything else.
Then the Lord spoke to me and said, “I want you to go to Boston.” I know this sounds crazy. How can another believer hear the Lord’s voice? All I know is that I was impressed that once I went to Boston and visited my friend, I was going to go to Atlanta, then to Memphis.
In Memphis, it was going to be settled. I was either going to believe Him there or not. It was a deep impression that this was fini, to quote the French.
So I went to Boston. I do not want to say much about it, but I had a terrible demonic experience. All I know is that the whole way home I said, “I want to serve the Lord. I want to serve the Lord. I want to serve the Lord.”
Then we came to Memphis in August 1982. I came with Gordon Alt, who lives here. Gordon and I were friends growing up, and Doug Alt was a few years older. He was my brother’s friend.
I knew there was a group here. But if someone had told me a year earlier that there was a group in Memphis, why would I have wanted to go? I was on Wall Street. I was doing this and that. Why would I want to live with a group of people in Memphis, Tennessee?
The whole thought of Memphis was beneath a typical New Yorker, if I may say so. Beyond that, why would I want to live in community life with people? Why would I want anything to do with it? But now I was saying, “Lord, just get me there.”
I came into Memphis and started meeting the brothers and sisters. Doug said, “There is a brothers’ meeting tonight.” I said, “Good.” I had no idea what a brothers’ meeting was, but I wanted to be there.
Gordon said, “Aren’t we going on to St. Louis?” I said, “We are not going anywhere until this gets settled.”
We went into this brothers’ meeting. Everyone there I had mostly met: Greg Winterburn, Clayton Saunders, John Lipscomb, David White, Doug, a few other brothers, and John Saunders. We were sitting around in the living room, casually. I did not know what was going to happen. I just knew I was glad to be there.
Somewhere ten, fifteen, or twenty minutes into the meeting, John Saunders started sharing about his life with the Lord, or what it means to know the Lord. It was like a crescendo at a concert. It was building and building and building.
At the end, he shouted, “And the best thing about it all is we get to be with Him forever!”
Doug gave a Texas Aggie hoop and holler. I had never seen anything like it in a meeting before or since. This was neither a tongue of man nor of angel. This was Texas. He started banging on that thick table that still sits in his living room today.
At that moment, the Holy Spirit came and cleansed me of every sin. He washed me, and I was a new creation in Christ. The Holy Spirit came in with discernment, understanding, and awakening.
I knew right away, though I did not say anything to anyone, that I was supposed to leave everything behind and move there. And thus I did.
I knew right away that I was living in a new creation. Old things had passed away. Everything had become new. It did not matter to me anymore—the music I loved, Bruce Springsteen, the Beatles, Billy Joel, and all that. It just went. I threw it out. I did not need that. I had Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit.
I did not need to watch television or go to movies. This was not a religious thing. I was free. I had the Holy Spirit, and life was new.
The Lord was very gentle with me. It was almost like He took me by the hand and said, “You do not need to do that anymore,” whatever the sin was.
Drinking alcohol—not that I was an alcoholic or anything—but He knew. The desire went away right away. There were other things that are less fit for prime-time discussion, but He simply said, “You do not need to do that anymore.” I said, “Oh, yes, You are right. I do not need to do that anymore.”
I was like a little baby in the hands of a loving Father.
I went back home for a two-week period. I will never forget walking into the house. My older sister, who was the most oppressed person I had ever met, met me at the door. For some reason, I was moved to put my arms around her.
The love of Christ flowed through me toward her as I had hardly ever felt before, even since then. I felt the pain of what she was feeling. When she was young, all of her hair fell out. She felt ostracized, and her whole life went downhill.
I felt the pain, sorrow, and suffering she was going through—the pain of someone whose life had become what happens when you live in this world. Eventually, as Hemingway said in his writing, it kills you. Eventually, this world will kill you.
I will never forget talking to my dad as I got in the car to come back to Memphis. He was out front, and I said, “I cannot explain to you. Just as I do not understand what it is like to be a father because you are a father and I am not, I cannot explain what happened. But I know that Jesus Christ now lives in me, and I have to go follow Him.”
Shortly after I came to Memphis, in one of the Saturday night meetings, a brother stood up and read from Mark 10.
Verily I say unto you, There is no man that hath left house, or brethren, or sisters, or mother, or father, or children, or lands, for My sake, and for the gospel’s sake,
But he shall receive a hundredfold now in this time, houses, and brethren, and sisters, and mothers, and children, and lands, with persecutions;
And in the world to come eternal life.
That was what the Lord said to me. “You left it all. You left your mother, your father, your sisters, your friends.” I wrote two hundred letters to friends, telling them I was following the Lord. I heard from one or two. One called me up and said, “What, are you crazy? What is going on?” Another responded, and we had a couple of dialogues. That was it.
Literally, the whole life was over. Then I got my job at the pizza place. That was my promotion in the kingdom. I met my wonderful wife, and life with the saints became glorious—until I began to meet myself.
Let me say twelve things quickly that the Lord showed me almost right away.
The Lord is utterly enthroned, and His holiness is beyond comparison. He is holy beyond comparison.
We live primarily in a spiritual world. Most Christians do not realize that. We tend to live either in the physical or the soulish realm, but we live primarily in a spiritual world.
The church, which is His body, is a living, organic expression of Him. It is not anything else.
Any other expression of the church is nothing more than a franchise business of this world. I do not have any problem saying it. How do you know? When they run out of money, they will go out of business. Simple as that.
The church is the living expression of those of us who are connected to the Lord Jesus. I grew up as a citizen of this world and had no religion growing up. So when I got saved, it was clear to me: there is no such thing as Christianity. That is fabricated. It is Christ—Christ in you, Christ in us.
We are a royal and holy priesthood.
God is restoring Israel for a glorious end. It was happening even as we spoke.
In my years as a believer, I have never met a brother or sister living a victorious Christian life who did not understand what God was doing with Israel. I have seen brothers and sisters go off the rails, and when you investigate—not to scrutinize or find fault—you often find an issue concerning Israel.
It may not have mattered in Martin Luther’s time. It may not have mattered in Count Zinzendorf’s time. But in the times in which we live, God is doing something with the nation of Israel. If you are in the center of His will, you must at least be aligned with what He is doing with Israel.
Ask of Me, and I will give Thee the nations for Thine inheritance,
And the uttermost parts of the earth for Thy possession.
The Lord is ready to bring in a mighty harvest among the nations. But if His church is asleep, He will find someone else. He will do it. It just depends on whether we are going to be part of it.
It is not merely a matter of serving God or mammon, or money. You can have lots of money and it not rule you. You can rule over it. In fact, you are supposed to rule over what you have. We are stewards.
Have you ever tried to plow? Have you ever tried to mow a lawn while looking back? All of us have looked back. There is only one brother I have known whose life I saw and who never looked back. But stop looking back now. We are going straight for the kingdom of God.
The last thing is this word: grace.
For ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that, though He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor, that ye through His poverty might become rich.
Grace, as Sonny said, is not about getting away with stuff. “Oh, grace will cover it.” Grace is God empowering you to live the overcoming, victorious life in all its fullness.
Grace is the provision to fulfill all of God’s requirements—the righteous requirements of God. We are poor, but grace is the provision we have.
I will never forget the first time the Lord really showed me grace in a deep way. I said, “Lord, I have had enough.” My wife and I were sitting on the couch, and the Holy Spirit came into the room.
He went through verse after verse in the Bible without me opening it. It is always good to memorize your Bible, because then the Holy Spirit can talk to you about it when the time comes.
He said, “Now taste and see that I am good.” I saw the goodness of the Lord. Then He said, “Let Me show you something else.”
For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed toward us.
Then He said, “Let Me show you something else. Let Me show you the love of Christ.” He took my New King James Version and put it into the New Living Translation: the love of Christ that blows the mind.
To see the sinless One exchange all His riches, take on poverty, and allow all of us to take that poverty and put on His riches—what an exchange. What an unbelievable trade.
He took us through many other Scriptures. It was the Lord Himself, literally. His appearing that time was much better to us than the time I was driving the boat on the Hudson River. That had been a terrifying time.
There is more I could share, but this is a time of testimony. I just want to say this: the Lord is the living God.
He speaks to us. I wrote down dozens of ways that He has spoken to me and to my wife: through the Word, through the Spirit, through brothers and sisters, and through circumstances.
He is speaking to everyone. If you are a believer, He is speaking to you. If you know the Lord, He is definitely speaking to you. You could not possibly be in this room otherwise.
It is time to give your life to Him and say, “Yes, Lord, I believe.”
I will get out of the way. Hopefully, my meanderings have been of some help. Let us pray. Then other brothers or sisters, if you have a testimony to share, it does not have to be long.
It is very difficult for me to speak for more than about two minutes—or one minute—about anything. Usually, I speak my life in very short sentences, or in brunches when I am talking to my wife.
Let us pray, and let us watch Him. It is the same testimony, but a different manifestation. It is the same Lord, but each one of us has something unique to speak of.
Lord, we thank You that You are the living God, the true God, the holy God, the righteous God—Lord, the God who is our life itself.
Lord, we thank You so much. Father, we thank You for the Lord Jesus Christ.
Lord, we thank You that You have given Him the name above every name, that You have made Him both Lord and Christ, that He is the risen, living God.
Lord, the same One who appeared to Abraham, Moses, David, and Paul can appear to us.
Lord, tonight, would You reveal Yourself through this one and that one, and help us to express You in all of Your glory. We thank You in Jesus’ name.