Testimonies — What God Has Done
This place is for witness: what God has done in a life, told plainly, where all can see it. It stands apart from the Weighing Chamber — the Chamber is for thoughts, revelations, and questions to be weighed; testimonies are not weighed, they are witnessed. ‘And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony’ (Rev 12:11).
The first testimony below is the Author’s own. Yours may stand here too: use the form at the foot of this page. Every testimony submitted is read before any is published — nothing appears here automatically — and writers are asked to withhold the names of other people and of churches in their telling, as the Author has done in his; any names that slip in will be withheld in editing.
How God Called Me — The Testimony of the Author
A note before it begins: the names of people and churches are withheld throughout this testimony — not because the Author sees anyone in this story in a negative light, for he does not. They were each walking their own path, on their own course in this life, as he was walking his. The names are withheld so that no one else need see them in a negative light either. The events are told exactly as they happened.
I was raised Baptist. I started attending church services at about seven or eight years old and was baptized by water at twelve. I went to church until about fifteen — roughly eight years — when I refused to go anymore. My family at church was my mother, my grandmother on my dad’s side, and my aunt, also my dad’s side. My father lived away after the divorce, though he had joint custodial rights; I chose to live with my mom because of my friends. We had close church friends who had been part of my life for years — the parents of a close childhood friend were some of my Bible teachers from about eight to fifteen. And there was a close group in that church who were filled with the Spirit and spoke in tongues, and they left — or were forced to leave — because it clashed with our church’s teaching that the baptism of the Holy Spirit was for the initial apostles and church fathers only, and had ceased. They were all labeled as flakes, or deceived.
One of that group was a Sunday school teacher and family friend who lived across the street from my grandmother. My first real experience connected to the Holy Spirit was through her, and it was negative. I was fifteen and knew why they had left; it was all over the church. I also had a deep infatuation with her daughter, who was my age and a church friend I had grown up around. So when, at sixteen, I was invited to a prayer meeting, I went only to be around her daughter. I can’t remember anything of what was said — the Holy Spirit was only background noise to me. But at the end, she started praying in the Spirit, in tongues — not a message in tongues needing interpretation, which is different, but with groanings and utterances — and she began laying hands on the people in the group. Some were being moved deeply; one girl in the circle was starting to have a fit. And when she put her hand on me, a rage and fear came on me, and out of my mouth popped an ugly voice saying, “Get your fucking hands off me.” I got the hell out of there, very confused, thinking she was a witch who had made that voice speak out of my mouth. I was determined not to go near her again.
By then I had fallen into a debauched lifestyle, selling drugs for a living. One night, at a friend’s house, I opened a large ornamental Bible sitting on a coffee table. I had never before opened a Bible myself — I had only ever heard it preached. It opened to Hosea 6:1–3. And I heard a Voice clearly in my mind — like being spoken to more clearly even than natural hearing, and not from the outside, like a hidden speaker. I freaked out bad. The person whose house it was came into the room to see what had happened, because I was crying, saying, “God is real, and He spoke to me, and He wants me to serve Him.” I was losing my mind. My friend laughed his ass off, thinking I was on acid — a drug we took often — and said it had to be a flashback. I told him I wasn’t tripping on acid; I was tripping on what had just happened. But I blew it off eventually and continued my wanton ways.
Shortly after that experience, I was caught and charged with selling drugs — three felonies — just after turning eighteen. I had not visited my home church for almost three years. About three months later I was on probation and trying to do better. My dad, who had moved out of state when I was sixteen, was visiting for a weekend and staying with his mother, my grandmother, and I was visiting them both. I saw my grandma weekly, even in deep rebellion. I had not made it into the front door before the neighbor across the street from Grandma — the same Sunday school teacher — called out to me.
My dad knew I had once been close to them, and he insisted I be polite, go over, say hello, and be a good neighbor. At first I said, “No way, she is crazy.” But then I thought about her daughter again, and I decided to obey my dad. I never saw the daughter. What happened instead was the next event in the series.
The very first words she spoke as I headed over were: “I see the Grateful Dead sticker on your car — you should have a sticker that says Grateful Life.” I was on the defense already, knowing she was crazy, and I said, “I just came by to say hi, not get preached at.” She smiled at me and said, “I was praying for you, and God gave me a word for you.” I was getting defiant: “Okay — what does God have to say, then?” And a boom — word for word, she spoke what God had said in my mind at my friend’s house, when I opened the Bible.
I was dumbstruck. She asked if she could pray with me. I remembered what had happened at the prayer meeting and started to leave, saying, “No need for that — have a good day.” She begged me to pray to God with her, because she knew I was called. I said I was not ready, told her to get away — but I promised I would go home and pray by myself, just to make her leave me alone. She just smiled and said, “God has a plan for you.” I left very shaken to my core. My dad asked how it went, and I said, “I told you she was crazy — she is giving me voodoo messages from God. I am never doing that again.” I armored myself so my dad would not see how much I truly was moved.
But I could not stop thinking about all that had happened, and I was so troubled that I finally decided to pray truly for the first time, all on my own. And when I opened my mouth to pray, I was filled — consumed — with the Holy Spirit, and my own mouth was praying in tongues, and I was crying rivers, with deep groaning and a releasing of my heart and my sins. I was, at that moment, forever changed.
That night delivered me from heavy drug use and from my rebellion against God, in but one hour — maybe several; I wasn’t keeping track — of true prayer. Within six months, I was instrumental in my grandmother and my aunt being filled with the Holy Spirit; they became open to the experience because of what had happened to me. Immediately after the experience I started going back to my home church with zero Bible knowledge — only the experience. Within a few months, the seminary students who were shepherding the church — the pastor had been sent out of state to a larger mother church, and the new one had not yet been appointed — noticed my enthusiasm and excitement and wanted to hear my testimony. I had no theological teaching and had not yet studied the Word, so I simply told them my story. When I finished, they were both very disturbed instead of joyful. They escorted me aside to educate me, and told me outright that what happened to me was not God but a deception, that I needed to repent, and they started trying to show me, scripture after scripture that I knew nothing of, how I had been fooled and misled — but that it would be fine when I saw the truth. I finally broke away and went out the back doors of the church to avoid other people. My grandma and my aunt both found me, deeply troubled, and I told them I would not come back to this church, but would find another. They were very upset as well, but still bound by their beliefs — yet they said they would not go back either, to support me, and because Grandma was now angry herself at my treatment.
I spent two years seeking God, and I became a member of her charismatic, Word of Faith church. Then a joint pastor joined his church with ours, doubling the membership overnight. He was married with two or three children and appeared holy and full of God — but I felt a peace depart, and a need to leave the church, and I knew it was tied to the new joint pastor. So I asked the original pastor of my church to send me out with his blessing to help a pastor start his church — a man I had just met recently at a prayer event, with whom I had a kindred spirit, and whose vision I had heard. I was given the pastor’s blessing to join with him in his work, and we did build a church. And then I left for Bible college myself, to learn the teachings of man and more about God.
I made fast connections, and the doors opened fast. I spent years in the spotlight ministry — preaching on television and in many of the largest and most well-known churches in the Charismatic, Pentecostal, and Word of Faith circles — a self-proclaimed and recognized Evangelist. And all the while a growing apprehension was working in me, as I saw the other side of the ministry of organizations and institutions: its adoption of a form of godliness, but denying its real and true power — the power of serving with the true love (in actions) of God in the Holy Spirit — and lacking the power that follows a true testimony of Jesus Christ, given by His humble servant preaching in His name and backed by the true gifts of the Holy Spirit confirming the true testimony and message given.
I was living a performance-based Christianity. It showed great piety and deep emotional devotion, but it was truly man’s doctrines and teachings. This very model, being mostly universal, taught me that it was the work of God and the move of His Holy Spirit — but it was only a trap, a fake substitution, that I allowed myself to be taught and to believe. I convinced myself this was how to serve God — just like all those who were my examples: the very successful leaders of the many churches, who had become my patterns, and whom I followed.
I myself was part of a prosperity-based ministry, believing God wanted my huge success financially, living off of the giving of God’s people — just as I was taught was our right, in our service of God, by feeding His flock. Yet I started feeling that something was missing, even as the business of ministry flourished and prospered.
So I eventually decided to shift my messages to focus solely on Jesus. In the middle of a large conference where I was a guest speaker, I had prepared deeply a study — Jesus on the Throne of the Heart, your old life now on the cross — determined to share a message that would be impacting, with prayer to mentally prepare. The main speaker of the conference — my closest mentor in ministry, renowned and very successful — asked me what I would be teaching. I told him, and he said that was very good, but not in line with what the Holy Spirit was going to be doing there: there was going to be a powerful and special anointing on a large sum of money. We called them seeds of faith, to the cheerful givers and sowers — and we taught ourselves to believe it for ourselves as well. He felt the Holy Spirit wanted me to preach on the widow’s mite, and tie the message to the large sum of money that would be blessed, bringing thirty, sixty, to a hundred fold to those who sowed this seed by faith — and that I could share my message at a different time.
So I preached on the widow’s mite. I prayed, saying the Holy Spirit would bless the offering and the giving of this anointed seed of faith — and as people flocked up for prayer and to give, I felt a complete emptiness. The Holy Spirit was gone. And I knew I was done. I even thought I had blasphemed the Holy Spirit. But I stopped preaching, and within a month I had left full-time spotlight ministry — to work with my own hands, to rediscover myself, and to find the God that I had lost and become blind to.
I did eventually, thank God, find what was lost. But it cost me my idols I didn’t see before, my false security of prosperity, and the long, learned education I had gained — to rediscover what had left, and what had actually been missing in my former life of serving, and of being a slave to man’s teachings. And that is the road that brings us to today.
Selah.
Told by the Author to Aperture on October 20, 2026, and prepared for publication with every name of a person and of a church withheld, at the Author’s direction.