November 2003
Page 1 - Nobody Ever Told Me by Jack Deere
Page 2 - A Tale of Three Countries by Paul Anderson
Page 3 - Stewardship Strategies For Effective Christian Giving by Orlando Logelin
Page 4 - The Not-So-Perfect Storm by Paul Anderson
Nobody Ever Told Me
by Jack DeereDid God bring me here, or did the devil bring me here - into this room to face someone I had never met, who knew my painful secrets? My façade of indifference was being assaulted secret by secret. Or was my heart being healed secret by secret? Was this torture or surgery? What good could possibly come from reading aloud the pages in a book of pain that I had closed forever? Yet it was I who had given the prophet permission to begin, and now I could not stop him.
Nobody ever told me prophets were like this. Until that day, I had never met a prophet outside the pages of the Bible. I did not believe prophets existed outside the pages of the Bible. Because we have the Bible, I could not see why we needed prophets. Besides, if we let them run loose outside the Bible, who could predict the chaos they might cause? To me, the prophets were just a temporary substitute for the real thing, the Bible.
Then something happened to change my view. But that is another story, which I tell in another book, Surprised by the Power of the Spirit. Let me just say that I found more reasons to believe in the existence of the prophets than to believe God has set them aside. But what did I believe? I still had a mostly theoretical belief. Then I heard from a friend that there were prophets, real prophets, in Kansas City. He was going to meet them. Would I like to go with him?
From the moment I decided to go to that meeting I was doomed. Not because I was about to face an onslaught of controversy. Not because I would spend countless hours defending a ministry maligned by many church leaders. And not even because I would spend more hours binding up the wounds of prophetic abuses. I was doomed because I would never again be happy in church or ministry unless it was infused with the power of prophecy. The mind God had given me was no match for the prophetic heart.
So, on a bright sunny September afternoon, with my biblically guarded heart and skeptical mind, I met Mike Bickle, the pastor of these prophets and of the church, which then was called Kansas City Fellowship. Mike was not very tall, yet he was built like one of those halfbacks who got so sick of being told he was too small to play football that he disappeared into the weight room and when he came out he ran over a thousand bigger tacklers on his way to winning the Heisman Trophy. His deep voice resonated with authority. Above all, he radiated joy. In his presence, I felt joyful, too. I could not imagine him ever having a down day. Before I knew it, I was disarmed and charmed. I wanted Mike's joy, and his passion for God.
But the joy did not last past the next morning. When I awoke, I remembered that I had come to meet prophets, not pastors. Before breakfast, I traded my joy for a superior attitude that was determined not to be deceived. I finished my last gulp of coffee, wiped my napkin across my mouth, and was ready to meet these so-called prophets.
That morning when my wife Leesa and I arrived at the church, we were led into a dingy little room with green carpet and orange plastic chairs arranged in a circle. Five friends had come with us. They wanted to encounter God. I wanted to evaluate men. Mike and four new faces were waiting for us. The first of those new faces met me at the door.
He was a six-footer with an athletic build, dressed as if he had just walked out of an Eddie Bauer catalogue. His face, though, was the kind of face you would expect to see on someone more at home in a camel hair tunic and sandals. He had longish graying hair, a salt-and-pepper beard, and disturbing, deep-set eyes. The eyes made him look otherworldly.
At first I thought his eyes were evil. Then I couldn't make up my mind. Then he spoke. "Oh, I didn't expect to see you here this morning." Pretty cocky, I thought. Already I did not like him. "What do you mean? I don't even know you," I said.
"Well I know you. It was eight nights ago. I had a dream. I woke up at three in the morning. I thought it was important so I wrote it down. You were in the dream. Would you like me to tell you what the Lord showed me about you?"
"Yes," is what I said. What I thought was, Try me. Take your best shot. I'm not going to be deceived. I have been warned about you prophets. I should mention that I was in a completely different tradition of Christianity than this fellow, and he really did not know me.
We took our seats in the circle. I knew about "cold reading," a skill used by gamblers, palm readers, and probably by false prophets as well. By careful observation of your clothing, expressions, and mannerisms skilled people can "read" you without knowing you. Cold readers are also skillful in getting you to admit the details of your life in a way that makes it look like those details have been supernaturally revealed to them. On this morning, I knew that no matter how skilled in the art of deception this guy might be, I would give him no signs to read, no tells to help him win this game. I hardened my face like stone. We stared straight into each other's eyes. My eyes revealed nothing. Then he spoke, and revealed everything.
"You have a prayer," he said in a soft southern accent, "but it's more than a prayer. It's one of the major dreams of you heart." Then he told me the prayer I had prayed that very morning in the hotel. It was a prayer I prayed almost every morning. And he was right. It was the dream of my heart.
"God said to tell you this dream is from him and you will get what you're asking for."
I could tell you what the prayer was and still is, but telling it now would be, at the very least, immodest, and worse, perhaps self-serving. At the time, it was the biggest thing I could think to ask for. And here, like Daniel, is this prophet telling me my dream and that it will come true.
My granite face did not crack, not even slightly. My eyes remained placid, not a flicker of joy. He was getting no clues from me. But inside, my heart was exploding with joy. I had not cried since I was twelve years old. It took a superhuman effort not to cry now. Until that moment, I had never understood the expression "tears of joy." Why would anyone, especially a man, want to cry when he was happy? Maybe I had never been happy enough to know until now. How could I be so special to God that he would put such a dream in my heart and then tell me he would make it happen?
Next subject
"You had a father who dropped the ball on you," he said. No! Not my father. That subject was off limits. Decent people never brought it up. How could he know about my father? My interior supports were giving way. How could he talk so calmly about the defining pain of my life? How could I hold it together any longer? If I let out what I was feeling now, I might destroy the self I had worked so long and hard to build. These fears kept me staring blankly at the prophet.
My father had dropped the ball on me, on all of us. One morning we woke up a normal middle-class family of six, ready for a normal day. I went along with my two little brothers and my baby sister to play at our grandmother's house. Mom went to work at her insurance office. My father stayed at home. By mid-morning, the lines for my father's last battle had formed in his soul. We never saw it coming. Sometime that afternoon, in the living room of our little three-bedroom house, my father put a gun to his head and ended the war raging within him. That night my mother went to bed alone, a thirty-four-year-old widow with an eleventh-grade education and four small children to raise. We would never be a normal family again.
I was the oldest of the kids. I had just turned twelve. Beyond some friends who brought the customary meals, there was no one to help us understand or heal.
At that moment, I had no idea what the Lord was doing. I wasn't even sure it was the Lord. All I knew was what I could feel, the prophet assaulting me with my own secrets, bringing up something wrong that could never be made right. I wanted the conversation to end. But the soft southern voice continued.
"The Lord is going to make up the loss of your father to you. He will send you new fathers. You won't learn from just one man. You will have the father you need for each new stage in your life."
Bringing up my father's death pained me, but the promise of new fathers bewildered me. How could anyone, even God, make up for the loss of a twelve-year-old boy's father? I didn't need new fathers. I was thirty-eight years old. I was a father myself. And I was totally happy with the spiritual mentor who was then in my life. I couldn't imagine I would ever need anyone else. But I said none of this aloud. I just returned his words with an unflinching stare.
Next subject
"When you were young, the Lord gave you athletic ability, but he allowed you to be frustrated in the use of it. This was so you would put all your effort into cultivating the intellect. You've done that, but it hasn't brought you what you expected, and you're heartsick."
He could not have given a more accurate synopsis of the past thirty-eight years.
I was born with athletic ability. I was strong and quick. In Little League baseball I could play every position of the field and always batted in the top four. I grew up playing tackle football with no pads on. Then, when it was time to start seventh grade, the time when I could play organized sports for the school, I lost my father. Everything changed.
There was no one to take me to practices or to bring me home. My mother worked late into the evenings, selling insurance and collecting premiums to keep her four little kids fed and clothed and under one roof. Sports were not on her list of necessities. I learned how to make the evening meals, and I missed out on the next three years of sports.
And I gave in to a lifestyle of drunken recklessness. That's when the Lord saved me, literally. It was the fall of my junior year. I started reading then, reading the Bible, C.S. Lewis, everything. And I never stopped. I found out that I could make straight A's when I wanted to. I also found out that there was an advantage to being perceived as smart. And the older you got, the greater the advantage became.
By the time I entered seminary, I had discovered that not only did I have an ability to think theologically, but I also had a facility with languages. Greek, Hebrew, and other languages were easy for me to learn, even fun. In seminary no one knew who had played sports in high school or college, or if they did, they didn't care. Everyone, though, knew who the "A" students were.
After the first year of my doctoral program, I finally made the team. Two of our Old Testament professors were taking leaves of absence for two years. I was picked to fill in. "Professor Deere." That was better than batting cleanup.
I was a professor. And not just any professor, like a professor of English or chemistry. I was a professor of the most important subject of all, theology, the study of God. And not just any branch of theological studies - I was a professor of perhaps the most difficult discipline of all, Old Testament exegesis and Semitic languages. As a result, people all the way from my fellow professors to my peer group to my parishioners treated me with a new level of respect.
Nobody ever told me it was dangerous to be a theological professor, particularly a young one. And no one ever told me that if you tried to find your identity in being smart, especially theologically smart, you would wind up heartsick. No one, that is, until now.
This prophet was amazing. He was right. I was heartsick. I knew it, but I hid it. From everyone.
The southern accent, now almost soothing, started again on the same theme. "All of that frustration was necessary to prepare you to fulfill the call that God has on your life."
So, there was a purpose behind the heartsickness. It was the mercy of God inviting me to travel a new road. There was a call on my life, but I had not yet entered into that call. Everything so far was just preparation. God would not let me succeed on an athletic field, but neither would he let me die drunk in a car wreck. He let me succeed in academics, but he would not let me remain intoxicated by that success. He sent my heartsickness to warn me of the danger of building my identity on such shaky foundations as athletics and academics.
Next subject
"You're in a conflict right now, and you think there are only three people on your side. The Lord says to tell you that there are five more on your side."
I was in a conflict, and I did think only three people stood by me. Besides me, the only one in the room who knew about this was Leesa. There was no way the prophet could know about the conflict. Yet he did. How did he know this? How did he know any of these things?
I was astounded. He was a real prophet. And God was a real God. Of course he is; we all know that. But sometimes he seems so distant and so removed from our troubles. Sometimes it seems that all we have to lead us into battle is a textbook on war, when what we really need is a wise and courageous captain. I heard the voice of my Captain in those prophetic words. He was telling me not to worry, that he would lead me through the minefields of this conflict.
By now, I should have dropped my guard. Instead, I continued to hold back the tears and look unimpressed by the Lord's loving omniscience.
Next subject
The future. The prophet left the subject of my past and went to my future. These predictions, I think, were meant for me to ponder, not to publish. Since these words were exclusively about the future, they, of course, could not be verified. But because he had gotten four key facts about my past correct and given them a meaningful interpretation, I believed his predictions.
I should have fallen on my knees like the psalmist, crying out to the nations to give glory to God, but I couldn't. My façade of indifference remained intact. Maybe it was stubbornness. Maybe it was pride. Or maybe it was some sickness in me that rendered a public display of emotion impossible. But maybe I was just making sure of the prophecy by not giving the prophet any last-minute clues. That way, when it was all over, I would know it was all God, and that I had not influenced any of it.
Now the prophet was finished with me.
There was no longer a reason for me to maintain the façade. It was over. The prophet had told me the secrets of my heart. The secret prayer of my ministry. The secret pain of my childhood. The secret frustration of my adolescence. The secret heartsickness of my adulthood. The secret conflict of my present life. With each secret came a promise that gave me freedom from the past and hope for the future. The prophet was real. I wanted to shout for joy to the Lord, but I didn't know how. Instead, I simply said, "Thanks."
When we were walking out of the room, Mike asked me, "Was any of that accurate or meaningful to you?""All of it was right on the money. Couldn't have been more correct," I said.
"You've got to be kidding. I was watching your face the whole time. I was sure you thought it was all just a bunch of bull!"
I walked out of that drab room into a colorful fall day. I was elated with the discovery that prophets were indeed alive and well. I was in love with prophetic ministry. I was ready to articulate its virtues to anyone who would listen.
I made a more profound discovery that morning, one I could not articulate then. I had worked so hard to overcome the pain of my past, to become somebody special. Others thought I was special, but I felt sick at heart. Then, through the words of the prophet, God's healing love came to me, reinterpreting my past, present, and future. God told the prophet all about my pain because God wanted me to know that he had always been there. Always. Watching over the little boy robbed of his father, watching over the frustrated athlete, watching over the drunken rebel, and watching over the heartsick scholar. Why? Because I was special to him. That was my discovery. I had preached that truth to others many times. But you can preach a truth without feeling the truth for yourself. Now I felt that I had always been special to him, and feeling this made me love God all the more. Through the prophet God was removing the burden of trying to be special, and he was telling me that I had never needed to look beyond his love to find my significance. Divine romance had just sneaked back into my life, and its calling card was happiness that I felt but could not, at that moment, explain.
I did not know it then, but now I know that mystery, wonder, and awe had all blissfully returned to my life through that prophetic encounter.
Along with that blissful return came a frightful suspicion - a suspicion that I had crossed some threshold and that my life would never be as predictable or as comfortable as before. After a long, prodigal absence, adventure had finally returned to my life.
Dr. Jack Deere is an author and lecturer who speaks throughout the world on the gifts of the Holy Spirit. He will be the speaker at our 2004 Equipping Conference, February 19-20.
Taken from The Beginner's Guide to the Gift of Prophecy c. 2001. Used by permission of Vine Books; PO Box 8617; Ann Arbor, MI 48107.
