The story continues today with my recount of that season wherein God began to convince me of the necessity of the gifts of the Holy Spirit. One lesson that the Lord has taught me over the years is that He is not obligated to use a template when working with each of His children. Oswald Chambers wrote in his devotional My Utmost For His Highest, “Never make a principle out of your experience; let God be as original with other people as He is with you.” Surely He understands how to migrate each of us from point A to point B. For me, arriving at Point B took me longer than was necessary due to my reluctance to cooperate with His plan. By the time 2013 appeared on the calendar, I was in need of yet another breakthrough. Today’s post reveals some of what happened during that season which proved to be a catalyst for the season in which I am currently joyfully walking through beside my King. – Jeff
The years 2006-2008 were huge years for me as a pastor. God abundantly blessed the ministry entrusted to me in those years. It was during this time that Transforming Truth went from a once-weekly AM radio broadcast to a twice-weekly television broadcast. Meadow Baptist Church was growing in every way – spiritually, numerically and financially. Primarily because of a shortage of space, the church eventually voted to relocate to a larger facility in . In Autumn of 2008 we began two services in our new facility and saw incredible growth. It was during this time that I also began to experience personal attacks which brought me face-to-face with my own limitations as a pastor. I was in over my head in ministry, and was unprepared for the ceaseless volleys from a small number of power brokers in the church. Additionally, I was working non-stop while Amy was busy with endless stay-at-home mommy duties. Looking back, we were both moving 100 miles per hour with no brakes to slow us down. It seems now that God allowed this perfect storm of circumstances to bring me to a radical end of operating in my strengths which were proving to be wholly insufficient. This hectic pace continued until 2011 when my wife was nearly killed in a head-on collision. Her mother, who was a passenger in the car that day, passed away as a result of her injuries. Because it is such a source of hurt for Amy, I will not go into detail about the accident in today’s post. Suffice it to say, God used the wreck to bring our whole family into a crystalized understanding of how precious and short our time is here on Earth. As she began to heal and to walk again, both Amy and I began to care little for the trivialities of this life, and we both intentionally ratcheted up our pursuit of intimacy with the Lord. We bonded together as husband and wife, and we committed to streamlining our life together in order to enrich each other, provide a more spiritually healthy home for our children, and to advance the Kingdom together with a clarified focus which we had lacked prior to the wreck. God used the worst event in our lives to springboard us into the most glorious season in our lives. He was turning tragedy into triumph.
Getting off a plane from a week in Minneapolis at a 2013 pastors conference, I was met with a series of emails and voicemails from three different men in the church who were all unhappy with me for different reasons. That afternoon, I spent a couple of hours reconnecting with my family but, at lunch together, the notifications on my phone continued to signal the barrage of conflict that awaited me at the church. At the end of lunch, I took my family home, and then took my heavy heart down to the church office where I met a friend who agreed to help me pray through what was going on with the three men who were upset with me. This brother who agreed to meet with me is a bold, discerning pastor from Nigeria. Jude is a big guy, my age, and had seen intense spiritual warfare growing up in Nigeria where there is often frequent and intense opposition from local witch doctors. We had been friends for a couple of years, and he was my “safe place” to discuss the work of the Holy Spirit as I was continuing to grow in both my understanding and my experience with Him. That day, Jude listened to me pour out my complaint about the three men who were opposing my leadership at the church. Discouragement was running deeply in me, and the travel weariness was not helping the matter. I literally wept as I poured out my heart to my pastor friend. If I was looking for sympathy, I was dropping the bucket in the wrong well. Jude, appalled with my ongoing whining, stopped me in mid-moan and said loudly in a thick African accent, “Man of God! Stop your crying. We will pray now! God will handle these men.” I immediately sensed the thickness of God’s presence and Jude and I prayed at length for the repentance of these three men, one of whom was openly slandering me and telling outright lies. The other two men were simply “gate-keepers” who had a history of trying to control others. I cannot describe all that occurred in my office during that prayer time with Jude but, suffice it to say, the presence of God was more manifestly real to me than He had ever been before. Something shifted in me that afternoon. Something also shifted with those three men. Within a few months, all three men had moved on from Meadow with very little fanfare. God had delivered me from my adversaries – not through reason, gifting or flesh, but through a sixty-minute prayer time with a Nigerian pastor who knew how to respond to the attacks of the enemy. God had enabled me to stand in the Spirit while I was being opposed by others in their flesh. Though I rest heavily in the sovereignty of God, I do not believe for a second that those three men would have been removed from Meadow without that afternoon in prayer. God had allowed me to partner with Him in this battle. I would never forget the lesson from that day and have had to repeat that process several times since then in similar circumstances. Though I had been a believer for nearly two decades at that time, I was experiencing measurable growth in the Holy Spirit. I was now learning about other aspects of the gifts of the Spirit – it is far more than praying in tongues. God was entrusting a greater measure of one particular gift to me that I did not even know I lacked: the gift of faith (1 Corinthians 12:9). This is not saving faith, but an endowment of the Holy Spirit which results in a trust and confidence in God that allows one to live boldly for Him, and to manifest that faith in mighty ways. This gift results in heightened confidence, certainty, trust, and assurance in God. I began to see why God had allowed a few years of uninterrupted challenge to me. He was teaching me that a faith that cannot be tested should not be trusted.
I have said it many times before: there was a clear transition in my life and ministry after that prayer time with Jude. From that initial deposit of increasing faith, I began to see what God could do with my broken, dependent and hungry reliance upon Him. I pressed in further to Jesus and began to experience a measurable growth in my private devotion which translated into fruit within my roles as husband, father and pastor. The next eighteen months catapulted me into a season of breakthroughs which will bring us up to the present day in this story. You have made it with me this far. I hope you will stick around for the next post. What happened to me was tougher than anything I had experienced in ministry before. It also happened to serve as a doorway into freedom.
Bro. Jeff it seems sometimes as I feel that I have all things so humble and just right in line with the Lord he let’s a balloon bust I see the whole thing is a solid wobble. Nothing is in line as I thought. What I do is so rewarding I actually hit my face and cry Lord PLEASE. Every time he shows me I am not as close and straight as I thought I was right then. God Bless my brother and our love to the church and family.