THE GREATEST MOMENT OF MY LIFE
In November 1960, my friend, Patty Troug at Bethel College told me, “John, as long as you are calling ‘idealistic’, ‘unattainable’, or ‘theoretical’ what God calls ‘necessary’, ‘practical’, ‘available’, and ‘attainable’, YOU are calling God a LIAR!!!” I had thrown a book away from me in disgust, FOREVER TRIMPHANT by Huegel, in which he quoted II Corinthians 2:14, ‘Thanks be unto God Who in Christ ALWAYS causes us to triumph, and manifests Christ through us in EVERY place!” (JB) ‘Victory, at ALL times and in every place! I had said “that’s too idealistic”, but then I realized, as a result of Patricia’s gentle rebuke, that I had been calling God a liar, in that He had said, “Victory always and everywhere.” And I had said, ‘Impossible”. I did not want to call God a liar anymore, So l went to my room, got out my Bibles, KJV, AMP, Gdspd, Greek
N.T., etc., and laid them out on the bed, and got down on my knees in order to see just what God DID say. Sure enough, God said, “Perfect victory always - everywhere”, AND “More than conquerors”, AND ‘Abundant Life”, AND “Joy unspeakable”, AND ‘Full of Glory”, AND ‘WE have the Mind of Christ”, AND ‘Christ our Life”, AND ‘whatever we ask”, AND “Greater works than these shall ye do”, AND ‘I can do all things through Christ”, AND ‘With God all things are possible” etc., etc., etc., etc. All these Bibles said the same thing!! So, I decided to do three things:
Three Steps to Take
- Confess every known sin, including having called God a liar
Please note: If you cannot remember a time when you specifically Invited Jesus Christ to come and live on the Inside of you, please do this NOW. That’s how to be born again!!!
- Yield COMPLETELY to the Lord Jesus I told the Lord Jesus that, If it were His perfect will, that I would be willing to be sick, maimed, killed, single, celibate, persecuted, misunderstood, forgotten, married to anyone He said (I was sure He was going to make me marry somebody really terrible). Anyway, I really meant business.
Now, these first two steps I had taken many times before, but I took them again. In fact, we should always keep up to date with the Lard, staying free from sin and staying in a totally yielded state.
- Appropriate by faith the highest-level walk in God’s Spirit, with Christ AS your Life! Invite Jesus Christ to come in to your life, and actually BE your life and to LIVE HIS LIFE through you. From the inside out, and take over completely as your Savior, Lord and Life!!!
Charles Trumble, in
The Life That Wins
, says that on this third step of faith, everything now depends. He suggests that we take a step of faith with total disregard for the presence (or lack of), accompanying signs or proofs, because the transaction must be based on faith rather than some feeling or tingle, etc. So, I remember reaching out my hand to the Lord God and saying,
“Lord Jesus, I believe You have a walk for me that I haven’t been experiencing; a relationship and an experience with You that I haven’t had before. Lord Jesus, I don’t know what to call It, and I don’t know how to get It, but whatever You call It and however one gets It, I receive It from You now In cold, blind faith., not depending on outward feelings or ‘signs’ as the proof of the transaction.
Thank You very much. In Jesus’ Name, Amen.”
Can you guess what happened? You guessed it. Nothing. Outwardly, or on a feeling level, that is. I felt really dead. Oh, I had accepted the Lord Jesus as my personal Saviour many years before, and I had yielded my Life to Him many times before. But the same thing had happened to me as would have happened in the Old Testament if one would have taken a clean lamb of the flock without blemish and then sacrificed the lamb under the hot Israel sun - and that’s all. Can you imagine the mess? The sacrifice NEEDED
the fire of God to come from heaven to light upon and consume the sacrifice as a sign of acceptance and anointing. I rose from my knees, in faith, really sincerely believing that a genuine transaction had taken place yet feeling nothing.
I put away all my Bibles and climbed wearily into my top bunk. After I was settled down I thought, “If anybody asked me to praise the Lord right now, it would be like someone asking me to praise a haystack.” That was how UN-emotional I felt, yet I knew that I had made a genuine transaction with God. But I was really tired and had no positive emotions.