One Word from God Can Change Your Life Forever
Have you ever heard the phrase, "One word from God can change your life forever?" It is true. I will never forget May 2, 1996. It was during mine and Sue's first year of being full time in the ministry. To the best of our knowledge, we were obeying everything that He had told us to do, yet we had been struggling terribly financially. I knew that was not His perfect will for us, yet I could not seem to break out of the "barely surviving stage" when it came to prosperity.
At that time I was "serving" the Lord, but I did not "know" the Lord very well. Consequently, I did not know my heavenly Father very well either. My relationship with the Father was still pretty much "performance" centered. Let me say it this way; I only had a relationship by "formula" when it came to my heavenly Father. I felt like, if I did "this," then He would do "that."
Because our financial needs were so great, I was daily in the frame of mind of "How can I get God to meet my needs?" I was following every formula I had ever been taught when it comes to prospering financially in the kingdom. Thank God for the Holy Ghost! He came to my rescue after a season of praying in other tongues and said to me,
"This thought never went through the mind of Jesus; What must I do today to get the Father to meet my needs?"
To me, that was an incredible statement because at the time it seemed that all my waking hours were CONSUMED with thoughts of, "What must I do today to get the Father to meet my needs." I asked the Holy Spirit, "Well, if Jesus did not think like that, how did He think?" The Holy Spirit responded,
"He believed that He was His Father's Son, and heir of all that the Father had."
FROM FORMULA TO RELATIONSHIP
From Gary Carpenter’s “My Testimony”
…I would listen to everything they would teach. How many of you heard about the hundred fold return? How about Luke 6:38? Give and it shall be given unto you. And everything that they said, I would try. I would try and put it into practice. And I’d do it, to be honest with you, I probably overdid it. When they taught the hundred fold return, I thought I found my ticket to God. I went and bought me an accountant’s ledger (now I hate to admit I was this stupid), but I did. I bought me an accountant’s ledger and literally kept track of every dollar we gave x 100 -- God owes me… How of y’all think that worked? That didn’t work worth a dog-gone. That didn’t work at all. So then, they come out with Luke 6:38, and the tithe opens the windows of Heaven, the amount of offering you put through determines the amount of … on and on. You pick your formula. I tried them all. I have been down every rabbit trail there is when it comes to those formulas.
Now here’s the scary part… They’re all in there! I could not figure out why. Now, I come back to the stone. The stone in Mark chapter 4. Here’s the problem, it’s like I would take a “run” at the prosperity message. Know what I mean? Bless God, here we go again. Give and it shall be given unto you, good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, shall men give unto your bosom, hallelujah! A hundred fold return in this lifetime with persecutions, I’ll take the persecutions, just give me the hundred fold, hallelujah….
As soon as I got saved, that old poverty doctrine that was in me, regardless of what I wanted, regardless of what I thought about it in here, what was in my heart in abundance, rose to the surface. And within a year, we went to the nice house, the two Cadillac cars, custom made suits, all of that, to what we affectionately call the “Roach Hotel”…
If you don’t get anything else out of this, get this: “Faith doesn’t work out of the head”.
Faith doesn’t come out of the head. Faith comes out of the heart. And every time I’d try and make another run at the prosperity message, it’s like, “Ok, we’ll start giving, we’ll start believing, we’ll start doing all of this”, but sooner or later those roots of prosperity would hit that ledge of stone. It was like that doctrine that was in me. That poverty doctrine, it was just like Jesus said. It was like rock. No way could the roots of the prosperity penetrate that rock. I didn’t know what to do about it. Well, we never did tap into it for years and years.
“Tell me a little more Jesus”. Now, if you don’t learn anything else today, learn this. I have learned this. There’s no point asking the Lord Jesus about step two, until you take step one. Forget it. It will never happen. He doesn’t operate that way. You take step one, then He’ll give you instructions for step two.
The part that remained was that poverty doctrine, still struggling. So God finally decided to put the axe to that root. He wanted to destroy that stone. He gave me some instructions to destroy it. Now that I had taken step one, I agreed to take step two, and follow His instructions…
How did that happen? How did I go from the guy who was living in the roach hotel, to now God is supplying all of my need. Here’s the last thing. The instruction was this (That stone), He said: “I want you to take these three verses, write them down or get the tape (2 Corinthians 8:9) which is, “For you know the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sake He became poor, that you through His poverty might be rich.” Psalms 34:10 which is: “The young lions do hunger and suffer lack, but those that seek the Lord shall not want any good thing.” (That word ‘want’ is the same word translated ‘lack’… And Phillipians 4:19 “But my God shall supply all of your need according to His riches in glory, by Christ Jesus.” And here was His instructions. He said: “Take those three verses Son, I want you to walk the floor and say those verses out loud with your mouth four hours a day!” Oh, and by the way, don’t diminish your praying in tongues time (which was forty hours a week).
“Is not My Word like as a fire, saith the Lord? And like a hammer that breaketh the rock in pieces?”
Jer 23:29
I started seeing a change in about three weeks from the time I actually started doing that…
It’s not only wrong doctrine that’s in us like a rock, that sledgehammer will pound that up and break it into little pieces where the Word can put down roots, but if you’ve got thorns on the inside of you, like the love of money; the deceitfulness of riches; the lust of other things; thorns that come to choke the Word; His Word is like a fire, and it will burn that stuff out of you.
Have you ever heard the phrase, "One word from God can change your life forever?" It is true. I will never forget May 2, 1996. It was during mine and Sue's first year of being full time in the ministry. To the best of our knowledge, we were obeying everything that He had told us to do, yet we had been struggling terribly financially. I knew that was not His perfect will for us, yet I could not seem to break out of the "barely surviving stage" when it came to prosperity.
At that time I was "serving" the Lord, but I did not "know" the Lord very well. Consequently, I did not know my heavenly Father very well either. My relationship with the Father was still pretty much "performance" centered. Let me say it this way; I only had a relationship by "formula" when it came to my heavenly Father. I felt like, if I did "this," then He would do "that."
Because our financial needs were so great, I was daily in the frame of mind of "How can I get God to meet my needs?" I was following every formula I had ever been taught when it comes to prospering financially in the kingdom. Thank God for the Holy Ghost! He came to my rescue after a season of praying in other tongues and said to me,
"This thought never went through the mind of Jesus; What must I do today to get the Father to meet my needs?"
To me, that was an incredible statement because at the time it seemed that all my waking hours were CONSUMED with thoughts of, "What must I do today to get the Father to meet my needs." I asked the Holy Spirit, "Well, if Jesus did not think like that, how did He think?" The Holy Spirit responded,
"He believed that He was His Father's Son, and heir of all that the Father had."
FROM FORMULA TO RELATIONSHIP
From Gary Carpenter’s “My Testimony”
…I would listen to everything they would teach. How many of you heard about the hundred fold return? How about Luke 6:38? Give and it shall be given unto you. And everything that they said, I would try. I would try and put it into practice. And I’d do it, to be honest with you, I probably overdid it. When they taught the hundred fold return, I thought I found my ticket to God. I went and bought me an accountant’s ledger (now I hate to admit I was this stupid), but I did. I bought me an accountant’s ledger and literally kept track of every dollar we gave x 100 -- God owes me… How of y’all think that worked? That didn’t work worth a dog-gone. That didn’t work at all. So then, they come out with Luke 6:38, and the tithe opens the windows of Heaven, the amount of offering you put through determines the amount of … on and on. You pick your formula. I tried them all. I have been down every rabbit trail there is when it comes to those formulas.
Now here’s the scary part… They’re all in there! I could not figure out why. Now, I come back to the stone. The stone in Mark chapter 4. Here’s the problem, it’s like I would take a “run” at the prosperity message. Know what I mean? Bless God, here we go again. Give and it shall be given unto you, good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, shall men give unto your bosom, hallelujah! A hundred fold return in this lifetime with persecutions, I’ll take the persecutions, just give me the hundred fold, hallelujah….
As soon as I got saved, that old poverty doctrine that was in me, regardless of what I wanted, regardless of what I thought about it in here, what was in my heart in abundance, rose to the surface. And within a year, we went to the nice house, the two Cadillac cars, custom made suits, all of that, to what we affectionately call the “Roach Hotel”…
If you don’t get anything else out of this, get this: “Faith doesn’t work out of the head”.
Faith doesn’t come out of the head. Faith comes out of the heart. And every time I’d try and make another run at the prosperity message, it’s like, “Ok, we’ll start giving, we’ll start believing, we’ll start doing all of this”, but sooner or later those roots of prosperity would hit that ledge of stone. It was like that doctrine that was in me. That poverty doctrine, it was just like Jesus said. It was like rock. No way could the roots of the prosperity penetrate that rock. I didn’t know what to do about it. Well, we never did tap into it for years and years.
“Tell me a little more Jesus”. Now, if you don’t learn anything else today, learn this. I have learned this. There’s no point asking the Lord Jesus about step two, until you take step one. Forget it. It will never happen. He doesn’t operate that way. You take step one, then He’ll give you instructions for step two.
The part that remained was that poverty doctrine, still struggling. So God finally decided to put the axe to that root. He wanted to destroy that stone. He gave me some instructions to destroy it. Now that I had taken step one, I agreed to take step two, and follow His instructions…
How did that happen? How did I go from the guy who was living in the roach hotel, to now God is supplying all of my need. Here’s the last thing. The instruction was this (That stone), He said: “I want you to take these three verses, write them down or get the tape (2 Corinthians 8:9) which is, “For you know the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sake He became poor, that you through His poverty might be rich.” Psalms 34:10 which is: “The young lions do hunger and suffer lack, but those that seek the Lord shall not want any good thing.” (That word ‘want’ is the same word translated ‘lack’… And Phillipians 4:19 “But my God shall supply all of your need according to His riches in glory, by Christ Jesus.” And here was His instructions. He said: “Take those three verses Son, I want you to walk the floor and say those verses out loud with your mouth four hours a day!” Oh, and by the way, don’t diminish your praying in tongues time (which was forty hours a week).
“Is not My Word like as a fire, saith the Lord? And like a hammer that breaketh the rock in pieces?”
Jer 23:29
I started seeing a change in about three weeks from the time I actually started doing that…
It’s not only wrong doctrine that’s in us like a rock, that sledgehammer will pound that up and break it into little pieces where the Word can put down roots, but if you’ve got thorns on the inside of you, like the love of money; the deceitfulness of riches; the lust of other things; thorns that come to choke the Word; His Word is like a fire, and it will burn that stuff out of you.
