The Word of My Testimony

Dearest Saints.

I want to share different agendas all the time that God has taught me and continues to teach me. The reason why I may have knowledge of many things is definitely not because of any intelligence of my own, but most likely the exact opposite. I learned much from God of the many errors of my ways and the greatfulness of His loving correction in order to be positioned to realize the rich value and wisdom of His instructions. What I like doing in these series is to encourage you to share what God has blessed me with. When we don't share with others of what we have learned, we are like that wicked servant who hid his talent and failed to use it to be a blessing to one another (Matt 25:24-30). We all have a testimony and are highly valuable to someone else. There is not one Christian who can truthfully say that they are not valuable to be an encourager or inspiration to others, or just to be spoon-fed by others, for we are all called to be ministers of God (1 Pet 4:10). God ultimately strengthens us and gifts us in the first place, but we never fulfill our greatest potential to be a rich blessing to others until we learn to surrender to Him, acknowledge our desperate need of Him and believe that He is able to use us no matter what. My desire is to always seek to be an encourager for what God has done in my life. I cannot think of a better way than to share my personal testimony, which is why I was able to write a book in 2009 titled "The Greatest Builder for Our Life". Sharing the Word of my testimony with the Blood of the Lamb is what the Bible tells us that shuts the mouth of our greatest accuser (satan) as found in Revelation 12:11. So I would like to do just that, by showing how great and merciful He has been to me that will shut the mouth of the devil and to never allow his garbage of lies and accusations to be a dumping ground for you.

My testimony goes back to when I was an infant. At that time, I had a case of mild epileptic seizure of which I was put on heavy medication for the first 10-11 years of my life. During that time, I saw myself as inferior to the rest of my family due to the effects of that medication and how it often slowed me down in many ways and displaying violent tempers. As my siblings succeeded in every area of their lives, I saw myself falling behind more and more. This has caused me to become angry (not realizing I was angry with God for what seemed of a great injustice during that present time), with much bitterness and resentment. When my other siblings skipped grades and passed with honors and went on to further their education in Tech school and university with little effort, I struggled much just to maintain an average grade. The result of many of these caused me to receive that disgusting competitive spirit within me and become a fault-finder because I felt angry and inferior. I graduated high school that was anything to brag about my marks. I failed at several jobs badly and started my downward spiral of feeling more inferior, bitter and negative. Later on, there were several times in my early career that I succeeded very well, but because I was competitive, I became proud to flaunt my success to try to prove to myself I was not a failure afterall. Then, because I could not handle success due to my pride, I had taken a turn again for the worse. Maybe that is why God did not want me to succeed early in life because I was not able to handle it. This proves the truth of the Bible when it tells us that pride comes before destruction (Prov 16:18), which I can identify with. Every part of my life hit rock bottom. Of course, alot of people would argue, "Where was God in all of this?" Without going through trials to crucify the hardness of my heart and the flesh (like having a proud spirit, being competitive, being critical of others and many other sinful attributes), I would have continued to live in spiritual darkness and remain blind to Gods love and His ability for me to live the blessed life which He willingly suffered in order to give us. I often lived with negative results simply because I was living in ignorance to Gods Word. As one example, I was just accepting every negative word spoken against me and living that defeated life simply because I was listening to the lies of the enemy through many people and not listening to what God had to say. When I realized many years ago that the devil was the real enemy and had deceived me all those years, the Bible told me that he was already defeated. Then why was I living a defeated life? This was often the result of listening to the lies of the devil more than believing what God says about us. When I reached up to God and repented of this, and humbled myself for His much needed help, I declared with His help alone, to cast out the effects of every negative word by not ever accepting it anymore. Then I learned to use His Word boldly to declare His promises for me because I began to see who He really was and what He wanted to do for me. I know when I have been kicked by the one who was a defeated enemy, I learned to develope that fearless confidence in Him (Heb 10:35) and refuse to allow the enemy to rule my circumstances. I was desperate enough to tell God that I no longer wanted to live according to my passions and ambitions, but to live for Him and to use me mightily to live the way He intended for me to live, and live to be a rich blessing to many worldwide. When I learned the truth about the power of the tongue (Prov 18:20,21) from Gods Word, I chose to boldly declare His victory in what He accomplished through His Son for me, simply because of who He is and choosing to believe what He says and refuse to listen to anything else aside from Gods word which is living a lie. In my present life, I can strangely say that I am glad that God put me through unfavorable circumstances because I now understand how I was blind to having that arrogant, proud spirit that is an offense to God. I can now boldly declare that it is only by His Grace, Mercy, love and wisdom that turned my life around and am now much better off then had I not gone through what I had to go through. I can never declare that God is the greatest Restorer of my life had I not saw the need and how great He was able to restore my crumbled life in the first place. By His Grace, I have accomplished much greater goals than I ever dreamed, since my rebellious pride had been broken and I desire to live to glorify Him. Since I have become successful in many areas, it is a great liberation to hate pride and no longer accept it when I remember my severe trials and past failures. Therefore, I hope this testimony encourages you to know deep within that trials are not simply an unfortunate event, but it is God doing a much required work through you (more than you realize) to become the best you can be for His glory and be most useful to advance His Kingdom. I now realize how valuable His Word is because I can be a living testimony that His Word is TRUTH and everything He says is for our eternal benefit.

The longer we fight against God by grumbling in our circumstances, by not trusting fully in Him, we are going to remain wandering around the same stupid mountain in the wilderness that will just take us longer to enter in to the Promised land (living the blessed life) that He wants us to enter in to. Just like it took the Isrealites 40 years to wander in the desert when it could have only taken them 11 days simply because they harbored doubt and unbelief that caused them to be totally thankless, to grumble against God and Moses.


Be blessed to browse my updated blog and both websites. God bless.

In the Matchless Name of Jesus
Richard
Associate Director
Answers2Prayer
http://sites.google.com/site/greatestbuilderforourlife
http://www.answers2prayer.org/