“The church of our times needs the apostolic spirit. She needs so deep a baptism with those fires of Holy Ghost that she can go out and set the world on fire by her zeal for the souls of men. Till then the generations of our race must go on, thronging the broad way to hell because no man cares for their souls.” – Charles G. Finney

Read the beginning of the series HERE

Teens Unlimited, Roswell, New Mexico

In March of 1986 we packed up and moved to Roswell 200 miles southeast of home and moved into a little old parsonage. My first day on the job as the new youth pastor of Tabernacle Baptist Church, the former youth pastor, who sadly was leaving the ministry and his wife for another woman, was directed by the pastor to take Lisa and I around and show us the city. I’ll never forget how he took us by both high schools and when we mentioned how we had Bible clubs at our respective high schools and how we had started them at Teens Unlimited in Springfield, Missouri he said, “Oh we’ve tried all of that here. You won’t be able to do that in Roswell.” Lisa and I just looked at each other and smiled. We had seen what God could and would do when His children meet the kingdom prerequisites of heart hunger, sacrifice, bold faith, and radical obedience to His word. He spent several hours driving us around telling us what we couldn’t and wouldn’t do. He told us how the youth ministry consisted of 30 spoiled, rebellious church kids who wouldn’t listen to us especially since we were only 19 and 20 years of age. Thankfully we had been living in the daily presence of God long enough to know that the roaring enemy had consumed this man and we felt only compassion for him but determined that we would not let God’s name and power be so defamed among this little church and this little youth ministry if we had anything to say about it.

We launched into this new Teens Unlimited ministry with all the passion and fervor and faith that we had and in just a few weeks God began to open doors and began to turn the hearts of the teens and their parents and the church to us. We were loving on the church families and praying and witnessing on the streets to teens and cleaning the church and anything else that was asked of us. We quickly began to learn about the awful truth of church politics and how churches are ran (often by people who don’t resemble Jesus in the least). That was very painful but we kept our eyes on the young people and God began to bless our efforts. We fell in love with those kids and they fell in love with us. One of the first things that I felt needed to happen was that we needed to make following Jesus as attractive as it truly is. Christianity is the greatest high, trip, hit of all time. It is not a duty or a drudgery to hang out with and work for the God who keeps planets spinning and births and kills stars and who is the most amazing Person in existence. Jesus is better than anything! His way is the path to true joy and excitement and adventure. Those who think different don’t really know Him. We showed those teens that everything they were looking for was ONLY to be found in Jesus Christ. Teenager after teenager began to turn their life over to Christ and start reading their Bible and witnessing to their friends. Their parents by and large immediately became concerned and started putting pressure on the pastor to make sure that I knew that I was there to keep their kids from getting pregnant, on drugs, and cursing too much. They made it clear that I was not there to turn their kids into radical followers of Jesus. Thankfully, I was just too young to listen.

I was preaching every week in that youth ministry like it was a city-wide evangelistic campaign and young people and adults were coming and getting saved and committing to be followers of Jesus. I had recently read David Wilkerson’s book The Cross And The Switchblade which touched me more deeply than I can express and I remembered how the members of the Mau Mau gang in the book wore red satin jackets with white lettering to identify themselves with the gang. I got the idea that we could do the same to identify with Christ and with Teens Unlimited. We taught a Bible study on reaching the world for Christ and then presented each teen and adult that completed the class a red satin jacket with the Teens Unlimited logo emblazoned on the back. I wrote and printed a gospel tract directed at teenagers with our logo and contact information on it and the young people started wearing their jackets to high school and handing out the tracts. Within a few months of our arrival the whole church was buzzing about Teens Unlimited.

I did some research and found out that the largest attendance that youth ministry had ever seen in the church’s 100 year existence was 60 teens. I thought it would encourage and excite the class to break that record and so I promoted to the young people that if they would bring their lost friends and have over 60 young people on a certain Sunday that I would allow them to honey and feather me in my suit that Sunday after the service. It worked only too well and on the given Sunday we had 63 teenagers and since honey moves too slow the kids brought two gallons of restaurant pancake syrup and two feather pillows. The whole church gathered out in the parking lot as I was doused in syrup and then covered with the feathers. It was all fun and games until the bees from the clover field next door to the church got a whiff of that syrup! Within a few moments I was a howling swirling mass of bees. Fortunately our little parsonage was right across the street from the church and so I made a beeline (pun intended) for the water hose in our front yard and doused myself with water as I stripped off my suit and shirt and then tore into the house leaving the bees swirling over my clothes on the front porch. It was hilarious to say the least.

Another wonderful thing was that I regularly filled in preaching when the pastor was away. One of my favorite sermons that I preached there was Fire In The Church (audio of the actual sermon below) on the fullness of the Holy Spirit. Preaching on the Holy Spirit in a baptist church? Wow, did I get in trouble for that one.

Another of my favorite sermons from that period was Impact the World for Christ (audio of the actual sermon below).

We had many adventures as God began to change the young people of the church and impact the youth of the city. It wasn’t long before we had established Bible clubs in both high schools and teens were being saved and getting on fire for Christ. We were interviewed by radio and television and the young people and most of their parents were excited to be a part. About this time a young newly married couple named Scott and Jaime Gurule asked us if they could join our team. The pastor warned me not to allow them because they had a shady past and he didn’t care for them but I really liked them and they were passionate about Jesus and about teens so Lisa and I said, “We would love to have you!” in spite of the pastor’s ire. We became fast friends after that and today Scott and Jaime are internationally known pastors of Covenant Generations Church in Tucson, Arizona and have been greatly used of God. Also about this time we found out that a Baptist church across the street from the largest high school in town was shutting its doors and their 200 seat auditorium was for sale. We began to pray that we could start a youth center there and within a month or two it was ours and Lisa and I would go there every night after working at the church and paint and remodel.

We painted red, blue, and yellow racing stripes along the walls of the auditorium (It was just this year that I realized that those are the colors and almost the configuration of the Colombian flag). They terminated at the front with a big flame and the words where there is no vision the people perish. We turned the previously unfinished Sunday school area of the church into a 50’s diner and game-room and we would hold a mini-revival there every Friday night much like the Monday night Youth On Fire meetings that my brother and I held when we were in high school.

As my 7 months pregnant wife was setting up for one of these Friday night revivals and I was out in the church van picking up teenagers her water broke and we had to take her to the hospital. The doctor’s said that our baby was coming 2 months premature and the hospital in Roswell couldn’t handle a baby that small so they were going to fly us to Albuquerque to the hospital there. Here we were. 19 and 20 with a baby coming this early and neither of us had ever flown on a plane before. Yet I remember so clearly that we were at perfect peace. We knew that our lives were a miracle, that we were called of God, and that He would take care of us. We got on that little medical plane and took off and our little 4 lb. 8 oz boy, Luke, was born the next day. Today he is a fine man of God with his own family. Praise the Lord!

The next spring, to celebrate our first anniversary with the ministry, we decided to have a city-wide youth evangelistic campaign with a pizza blast like we had done in Springfield. Scott set up TV spots and billboards and radio spots and we put up posters and flyers all over town. We packed out the church gymnasium and I preached my heart out. Many teens from all over the city and of varied race and societal status were saved that night.

Shortly after the pastor called me in and told me that he and the deacons were concerned about the “type” of young people that I was bringing in. He let me know that they didn’t want “those people” in the church and that those kids parents were never going to come and were never going to tithe anyway. He wanted me to “bring in the football players and the cheerleaders.” I was stunned and sickened. I had received quite a bit of resistance all along from the established hierarchy of the church but because the teens and parents loved us so the politicos were careful about confronting me but now I had gone too far. I was being forced out. We were heartbroken but rejoicing in the year we had shared with this church and the lives that had been changed. We moved back home to Albuquerque wondering what God had for us there.

Aflame For God 11 – Punk Rock Baptist Church

I’d like to give a general idea of where we are at currently. We are in the process of sending in applications and getting a support system going. When we get further along in the application process we will have a better idea about when we will leave. Right now we are hoping and praying it will be early September. So what about needs? 1. The Dream Center asks 1,500$ for each volunteer that comes and stays with them for eight to twelve months. 2. We will need money for plane tickets when it comes time to go. 3. The Dream Center also recommends we have financial support while we are there of 100$ per person a month for basic necessities. These are the major needs that we ask for prayer about. We also have some minor needs such as clothing and possibly a small fridge and microwave for our living arrangements. All together I think we are looking toward raising 8,000$. We don’t know yet how God is going to meet these needs but we are praying and moving ahead one step at a time. We thank everyone for their support and are excited to watch God move!

So as yal can see my dad and I built a blog this weekend for our latest undertaking, ministry in L.A. Prayers are much coveted! I plan on jumping right into updating the blog on needs, prayers, praises and just general information as soon as I can. Anyone interested in keeping up with our progress and needs can follow us on the blog! I am very excited! A big thanks to anyone who jumps on board with this! Yals support is much needed!

We are three sisters with a shared passion to spread God’s heart of love to lost and hurting souls. Our passion was born as we ministered with our dad in the orphanages of Bogota, Colombia and helped found Orphan Hope International. Eventually the three of us with our sister-in-law formed a singing group called Purchased. We love this name because it reminds us that we are not our own we are bought with a price (1 Cor. 6:19-20). Our work in Colombia is growing but as we move forward God has brought another opportunity to reach out to the lost and serve in an amazing ministry called The Dream Center. We first heard about the Dream Center from Matthew Barnett in his book The Cause Within You and later heard him preach at Lakewood Church in down town Houston. Each of us felt God stir within our hearts a burning desire to get involved in the work this ministry is doing in L.A. We have much ahead of us and we pray God blesses our efforts and that we may bring much glory to Him and much healing to the broken people of L.A. We hope to learn much from the incredible ministry model of the Dream Center and someday bring that vision to the nearly 8 million people of Bogota, Colombia.

“May God so fill us today with the heart of Christ that we may glow with the divine fire of holy desire.” – A.B. Simpson

Read the beginning of the series HERE

Lisa and I started out married life in a Baptist Bible College married dorm. It was so cute. It was a tiny one room efficiency apartment with a Murphy bed that folded down out of the wall. Shortly after we moved in my mother shipped us a big box of wedding presents that the dear folks at my church in Albuquerque had collected for us. We set up our little home very nicely. Shortly thereafter we were out soulwinning and ran across a homeless hispanic family living in their van with two little kids. With the help of our prayer team we set them up in a little apartment and my new bride gave them all of her wedding presents to help establish them in their new home. They came to Christ and were baptized and we stayed in touch with them until we moved away. This was to define our family forever. From that moment on our house was always going to be a home for anyone the Lord sent and our possessions were always going to be “on loan from God” until we ran across someone who needed them more than we did.

We were still working in Teens Unlimited, praying, preaching, soulwinning, and studying like mad people. I was still pursuing my study of the anointing of the Holy Spirit and during our first 6 months of marriage I read every single book in our bible college’s two story library on the Holy Spirit, gifts of the Spirit, revival, and evangelism. I was a man obsessed with having what Jesus had in…

 
[quote]Luke 4:14 And Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit, and news about Him spread through all the surrounding district.
 
Acts 10:38 “You know of Jesus of Nazareth, how God anointed Him with the Holy Spirit and with power, and how He went about doing good…[/quote]
 

and the apostles had in…

 
[quote]Acts 4:33 And with great power the apostles were giving testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and abundant grace was upon them all.[/quote]
 

and Paul had in…

 
[quote]Rom. 15:19 …in the power of the Spirit; so that from Jerusalem and round about as far as Illyricum I have fully preached the gospel of Christ.
 
1Cor. 2:4 and my message and my preaching were not in persuasive words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power,  5 so that your faith would not rest on the wisdom of men, but on the power of God.
 
1Th. 1:5 for our gospel did not come to you in word only, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction;[/quote]
 

I could honestly say with Paul…

 
[quote]Act. 20:24 my life is worth nothing to me unless I use it for finishing the work assigned me by the Lord Jesus—the work of telling others the Good News of the wonderful grace of God.[/quote]
 

I read the stories and biographies of men and women throughout church history whom God used mightily and the more I read the more my heart burned to know God and expand His kingdom like those men and women had. I read about D. L. Moody, R. A. Torrey, Wilbur Smith, Charles G. Finney, Billy Sunday, George Mueller, William Carey, Adoniram Judson, Christmas Evans, Peter Cartright, George Whitefield, John Wesley, Mordecai Ham, The Moravians, David Brainerd, Robert Murray McCheyne, Jonathan Edwards, C.H. Spurgeon, William and Catherine Booth, Hudson Taylor, George Fox, Andrew Murray, Oswald J. Smith, and many others. I wanted so desperately to see God vindicated in the world and to see Him show His power and I wanted so bad for people to know Him and not be lost anymore.

All along the way since I gave my life to Christ at Singing Hills Camp I had faced resistance by my family, friends, and even spiritual leaders. The fact was I was just too radical for most of them. As I delved deeper and deeper into my studies of the history of great awakenings and reformations and revivals (which is what my soul longed for so desperately) I began to experience more and more resistance and even persecution from those in the Bible college and the church that my life caused to be uncomfortable. I became weary of the opposition and it wasn’t long before I began to feel strongly that I should leave school (ah youth!) and pursue a ministry of evangelism full time. We packed up what little we had, said our tearful goodbye’s and headed for New Mexico. I felt that I would have more opportunities back home where my life and ministry were known.

Shortly after arriving back in Albuquerque we discovered that we were expecting our first child. We were ecstatic! Our families were not amused. Here we were 19 and 20 years old with nothing to our name out to save America! We moved into a little apartment in The War Zone (a section of Albuquerque riddled with drugs, gangs, poverty, and crime). I put a handmade sign on the door of the apartment that read, “Matthew Bullen Ministries Revival Center” and we began to pray for God to open the doors for us to serve Him.

Within a month I was offered a full time position as a youth pastor at Tabernacle Baptist Church in Roswell, New Mexico. Lisa and I felt that it was a good place to start and so we accepted, trusting God for great things. Aflame For God 10 – Fire In The Church

Here are some of the amazing events that God has called us to and we covet your prayers and support…

1. Texas Vacation Host Program. Bringing 17 Colombian orphans on July 15, 2011 for three weeks to stay with 11 families in the Houston area. This program has been very successful in helping children to find forever families. Working to raise $42,000.00 to fund this summer’s program.

2. June Mission trip. Taking 40 people to Colombia June, 2011. Planning a way to take 10 ea. 40 gallon bags of feminine care products, 30 baseball bats, and a pickup truck load of t-shirts donated last week by YMCA. Coordinating with the Colombian pastor whose church we will visit on June 19, 2011 where we will preach, sing, and have lunch with the church. The Colombian/Houston band Viraje (www.virajemusic.com) (https://www.facebook.com/virajemusic?sk=wall) will be traveling to Colombia with us and doing mini-concerts in each orphanage. Working to raise $20,000 to fund this trip.

3. Vision trip to Bogota for local church leaders and pastors sometime in October.

5. Mission trip, January 2012. Sign up now!

6. 2nd annual Share the Hope fundraising dinner, February 2012 with a goal of raising $250,000.00 for orphans.

7. Orphan Hope Marathon February 11, 2012 at Huntsville State Park. Look for the new website at www.OrphanHopeMarathon.com coming soon. Hoping to raise $250,000.00 for our Safe House operation that gives orphan girls vulnerable to sex trafficking a loving Christian home and a chance at life.

God is moving mightily! The team here at OHI could each write a book about the miracles we have seen this year. To God be the glory!

“Flame is the air which true Christian experience breathes. It feeds on fire; it can withstand anything rather than a feeble flame;” – E.M. Bounds

Read the beginning of the series HERE

God had abundantly answered my prayers to be back in the action of winning and discipling young people while attending Bible college by allowing me to be a part of Teens Unlimited Youth Ministry at Baptist Temple, Springfield, Missouri. Lisa and I were quickly assigned a bus for Sundays to pick up teens and we started hitting the streets on Saturdays visiting and witnessing to young people. God blessed our efforts and soon teens started getting saved and coming to Teens Unlimited on Sunday. We would go all over Springfield and just stop teens on the street and start telling them about Jesus. During the week our prayer groups would be praying for the teens and workers by name. We began to see God really move in hearts and change lives. It was so exciting. It wasn’t long before I was asked to preach to the teens on a Sunday morning. I was ecstatic. I had been studying and praying for power to preach and here was my chance. Lisa and I made a pact to fast and pray as much as we possibly could the week prior to the Sunday I was supposed to preach. By Sunday we were so weak and so tired that I was wondering what in the world I had been thinking. Lisa sat in the back and prayed and I gave my sermon but I felt like it was a total flop. I preached my heart out for 45 minutes and then went and sat down on the front row and put my face in my hands and started to weep. I was complaining to God that I had fasted and prayed and preached my heart out and I didn’t feel anything supernatural. Just about then I heard a great rustling and I peaked up to see dozens and dozens of young people at the front weeping and repenting and giving their lives to Christ. I couldn’t believe my eyes! I put my face back in my hands and started praising God with everything I had. The invitation lasted as long as the sermon and at the end of the 2 hour service almost all of the teens in that ministry had either been saved or rededicated their life to Christ that morning. Praise God! That night the baptism service was amazing as young person after young person was baptized. I’ll never forget it as long as I live.

We continued working the streets and winning souls and building Teens Unlimited and more and more invitations started coming for me to preach around Springfield and around the country. Our team of prayer warriors and I made a trip to Indianapolis Indiana and held a youth rally and souls were saved and lives changed. We got to go to Kansas City and hang out at Jerry Johnston’s ministry headquarters and other amazing things. I was preaching so much that I couldn’t work a job and most of my preaching engagements didn’t pay anything so we would “pray down” the money to go. I’ll never forget whining to God one night that I had prayed and prayed and believed Him for some money and nothing had come in. I got up off my knees and went to my mailbox on campus and there was a check inside for $500.00. Boy did I do some apologizing for my unbelief to the Lord that night.

Then we heard that Jerry Johnston was coming to hold a week long conference on evangelism at our school and he needed volunteers to hand out brochures and put up posters and promote the meetings. We jumped in and helped and then sat enthralled each night as different speakers from around the country preached about evangelism and winning the lost. It was exciting to get to spend some time with him and tell him about what I was doing at Teens Unlimited. One night a young pastor preached on Power From On High and he told about how Jesus, our example, was anointed of the Holy Spirit to do powerful ministry and so must we be. He preached from Is. 61:1 The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me, Because the LORD has anointed me To bring good news to the afflicted; and Acts 10:38 “You know of Jesus of Nazareth, how God anointed Him with the Holy Spirit and with power, and how He went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with Him. I was tore down. I remember going to the front during the invitation and praying so hard that I didn’t realize the meeting was over and I was the only one left at the front until one of my buddies came and got me and we left. God was continually reminding me of where the source of power was from to reach souls.

Lisa and I were steadily growing in our love and admiration of each other though we were still not considering ourselves romantically attached. We were just “working in ministry together” but we were inseparable and had been for 6 months. March 1, 1985 would change all of that. This night was supposed to be a youth ministry night but for some reason that I can’t remember it got cancelled and we ended up going to the mall with a young evangelist and his wife to hang out. This young man had worked for Jerry Johnston Ministries and now had his own ministry and he was also helping out at Teens Unlimited. We hit it off that night and had a wonderful time. I’ll never forget at one point he turned to me and said, “what is the deal with you and Lisa?” I said, “well we really like each other but we aren’t dating or anything.” He said, “Why not?” I said, “well frankly she is so perfect that I’m afraid if I date her I will want to marry her.” He said, “And what is wrong with that?” and I said, “I don’t know if she is God’s will, or how to even know how to know if she is the right one and I don’t want to make a mistake.” He laughed and said incredulously, “So you are telling me that you love her, she loves you, she’s perfect, she thinks you are perfect, but you are not sure if she is God’s will for you???” Then he held up his arms like Elijah and said in his best Jerry Johnston imitation “Matt Bullen, how long halt ye between two opinions?” “Marry this girl!” It was the mentor approval that I needed. I asked her out that night and she looked at me like, “I was wondering when you were ever going to ask?” and we had our first date the next Saturday night, March 7, 1985.

Shortly after I received an invitation from Lisa’s pastor in Michigan to come and preach at his church. I was excited to meet him and Lisa’s family and friends. I had been asking the Lord what He wanted me to preach and one day as I was walking around a high school campus praying for the teens there it struck me that the reason most Christians weren’t reaching people for Christ was that they didn’t fully grasp the gravity of three things. I felt that if people had a clear vision of the horrors of hell, a clear vision of the glories of a transformed life in Christ, and a clear vision of standing before the judgement seat of Christ and giving an account of how they had used that transformed life, their lives would be different than most of the Christianity I saw around me. I was excited about preaching this message for the first time at Lisa’s church. I was also excited because most of Lisa’s family didn’t know Christ and she and I were praying that they would come to hear Lisa’s “beau” preach and God might do something mighty on their behalf. We caught a ride with some other college students and headed for the Detroit area. We had a wonderful time with Lisa’s church and got to meet her family. I preached my heart out that night. The sermon was entitled Get A Vision (the audio is below) and God blessed it and many came to Christ that night, some in Lisa’s family. It was glorious. I’ll never forget what Lisa’s pastor said to me after the invitation ended and all of the people went back to their seats. He looked at me in amazement and said, “son, just never get to where you think it was you that did this.” I said, “yes sir”, and I have kept that promise. Glory to God alone for His mighty works. The original audio of that message is below.

God continued to bless our ministry at Teens Unlimited. Many days and nights I would walk to the different high schools in our part of town and walk around the campuses asking God to give me the souls on those campuses. One day to my utter amazement the Sr. youth pastor told me that God had burdened his heart for all of the high school kids in Springfield and he asked me if I would hold a city-wide youth evangelism meeting for Teens Unlimited. He said that he would get the pizza and everything just like Jerry Johnston was doing around the country and we could invite all of the teens in the city to come and I could preach to them. He said that we could have an all night prayer meeting the night before and just see what God would do. I was delirious with excitement. I ran back to our little group of prayer warriors and told them about the plans. We began to plan, promote, and pray. We prayed all night the night before and then worked all day the next day to get ready. The night finally came and there in the stands were all kinds of kids from all over Springfield. I was so weak and tired I was really worried but I stood up and preached my heart out all the time begging God in my spirit to do something amazing for these young people and to lift up the name of Jesus. To my great delight, when I gave the invitation teens started streaming to the front to be saved. I remember praying with one young man from the local football team and when we finished praying he jumped up and beat his chest and said, “I got it! I got it! I’m going to heaven now!” It was a miracle night. Cheerleaders, and jocks, and druggies, and just kids of all kinds got saved that night. Our faith was growing and we knew that God’s word was true. The original audio of the message is below.

Shortly after the Pizza Blast as we called it, the Sr. youth pastor announced that we were going to be taking a mission trip to the inner city of New York in the next few months. We sent off to all of the gospel tract societies in America I think and asked for free tracts. In the end we collected just at 1,000,000 tracts to take on this trip. We did car washes and fundraisers to raise the money to go.

Before we left in July however, I wanted to take Lisa home and meet my folks and friends in New Mexico. We had borrowed a car and gathered up all the money that we had for gas. We did the calculations and knew that it wasn’t enough to get us the 850 miles to my house but we really felt that God was in this trip so we set out by faith, trusting that He would provide along the way or stretch our gas mileage. We headed out and made it all the way to eastern New Mexico before we ran out of money and gas. We pulled into a little gas station in Tucumcari and decided to go into the Denny’s and use the restroom before we decided what to do. We bowed our heads and asked the Lord to provide. I went into the men’s room and when I came out there were four men talking to Lisa and she looked a little pale. I walked over and introduced myself and realized that they were asking about the Teens Unlimited logo on our shirts. Lisa and I explained about our ministry and that we were going home to see my folks and then returning to go on the mission trip to New York City. I’ll never forget the feeling in my stomach when one of the men reached in his pocket pulled out his wallet and said, “here, I want to give you a little something to help out with your ministry” and handed me a $20.00 bill (just enough to get us home). My head was swimming and I wanted to run out the door and put gas in that car right then before that $20.00 disappeared or something. Then the man said, “hey can I buy you something to eat?” Lisa and I hadn’t eaten for a couple of days because we were saving all of our money for gas to get home but I was so excited about getting out there and putting gas in that car and getting on down the road that I told him no thank you. Lisa kicked me under the table and gave me a look like, “what are you saying? I’m starving” 🙂 but I was ready to go. She never has let me live that down. We said thank you and slipped out of the Denny’s and headed home praising God! The most amazing thing about this story is that some years later I would be interim pastor for a time at the Temple Baptist Church in Tucumcari, New Mexico and the man who gave us the $20.00 was a member of that church and he sat under my preaching for a time and I got to tell him what a miracle that money was for us.

We enjoyed 2 weeks at home and then back to Springfield and then off to New York City. It was a marvelous trip. We got to sing and preach on the streets and we handed out all of our 1,000,000 tracts in just a few days. It was astonishing. I remember a busy intersection in the Bronx. We would have 4 people on each corner with an armful of tracts handing them out to people as fast as they could for hours and hours. Sometimes a line would build up as the people were waiting to get whatever the young person was handing out. Many times they would stop and read it right there and we were able to engage them in discussion and lead some of them to Christ. There was a little church plant in the Bronx called Lighthouse Baptist Church and I got to sing there one Sunday night. I also got to preach at a church in Saddlebrook, New Jersey just outside of the city. It was a blessed time. We also did some sightseeing and Lisa and I stood on top of the World Trade Center and dreamed of the day we would hold city wide evangelistic campaigns in major cities all over the country. Our minds, hearts, and dreams were expanded.

We came home to Springfield, and with the approval of our Sr. pastor, Dr. W.E. Powell, who was also chancellor of our college we decided that we should get married before the next semester started. We set the date as August 3, 1985 (Lisa’s step dad’s birthday) which was just a few weeks away. The teenagers from Teens Unlimited and our Bible college friends rallied around us and we had a wonderful wedding. Many of the people who stood up with us, sang for us, decorated, and more were teens that we had won to Christ that year. The young evangelist who had asked me at the mall “How long halt ye between two opinions?” and his wife were our best man and matron of honor and the Sr. youth pastor walked Lisa down the aisle. The teenagers had taken up a collection and rented us the honeymoon suite at the nicest hotel in town. No two kids were ever more happy to be wed. She was 18 and I was 19 and we were ready to win the world for Christ… together! Aflame For God 9 – A Man Obsessed

“Saturate me with the oil of Thy Spirit, that I may be aflame. Make me Thy fuel O flame of God.” – Jim Elliot

So I kept seeing this redhead in the choir but I was sure that I was imagining that she was smiling at me. As I learned later the redhead’s name was Lisa and she actually was smiling at me and had been watching me for some time. She says that of all the young men in that auditorium, I was the most serious and passionate about the singing and preaching and this intrigued her. Each day when she came back to her dorm her roommates would ask her if she met a guy yet and once again she would explain that she was not there to meet guys but to get prepared for ministry. Finally they wore her down and one day she told them, “well there is this one guy I would like to meet but I don’t know his name.” They squealed with delight and made her promise to point this young man out the next time she saw him. So later that day I come walking into the cafeteria and Lisa pokes her roommate and says, “there he is…” her roommate Karen looks up and says quite loudly, “Matt Bullen!!!??? That’s the guy you want to meet, Hey Matt!! Come over here! So now Lisa is bright red and crawling under the table. It turns out that her roommate is my dear friend Karen from my church. I came up with Karen through Sunday school since we were 4 years old. She is like a sister to me. Lisa is petrified and of course I have no idea what is going on and at the moment. I don’t even recognize Lisa as the girl from the choir. Karen just introduces me to all of the girls at the table and I move on never giving it another thought. But for a week or so after Karen keeps telling me that her roommate likes me and she wants me to meet her. I keep telling Karen that I can only imagine what kind of girl she is trying to match me up with and I want no part of it.

Finally one day we are having a big lunch on the grass in the middle of campus and Karen comes and starts dragging me by the hand to meet her roommate. I reluctantly give in and she walks me up to Lisa and my eyes bug out because its the redhead from the choir! I feel like telling Karen, “Why didn’t you tell me it was the pretty redhead?” 🙂 Anyway, we talk a little but this girl Lisa is painfully shy and so I’m not sure if she is really enjoying this or if Karen coerced her as well. The next day however we got a chance to talk for a long time and tell each other our conversion and following ministry stories. She had been saved out of a horrible situation at the age of 13 had moved in with her pastor and his wife and kids and had lived with her youth pastor’s family some as well and been thoroughly discipled by them. She had been a radical witness in her high school too and had won and discipled many teenagers in her school. We had a very similar passion, vision, and mission in life and I left that visit that night knowing she was the one.

I had a little problem though. I had a girlfriend back home that my whole church thought I was going to marry. I had been chasing this girl on and off since I was in the 7th grade and everyone knew we were going to get married after she graduated high school. (Of course because we were strict Fundamental Baptists, so chasing her meant trying to sit by her in church). Now I had met the girl of my dreams and I was in a pickle. I explained my situation to Lisa and we reluctantly agreed that we should just be friends but neither one of us were very happy about it. We started meeting with some other friends every day to pray and seek God for His power to win souls. I was sharing with Lisa all of the things I was reading about the Holy Spirit and revival and she was getting more and more fired up. She and the girls in her dorm started having all night prayer meetings asking God to revive our college and to give us souls. The more time we spent together the more I knew we were both falling hard for each other and I kept trying to figure out how to get out of the fix I was in. It seems comical now but at the time it was a serious dilemma. When I went back home for Christmas, my girl back home informed me that she had met another guy and that she thought we ought to “date around” while I was away at college. No young man was ever more happy to be dumped!!

During this time another dilemma had been rising up in me. I had loved and soaked up all of the study and the prayer and the seeking God my first semester at Bible college but one thing was eating at me. I had just spent two years in high school winning souls every day, teaching every day, preaching every week, and various other ministry adventures and though I had needed the time with God and the season of searching for His power I was now ready to get involved in some sort of ministry and get back in the action. I had noticed a sign at Baptist Temple where I attended that read Teens Unlimited Youth Ministry. I felt drawn to that sign and I started praying that God would let me get back to winning the lost somehow and that he would let me be a part of that ministry. To my amazement, within a couple of weeks I was invited to be an assistant youth pastor in that ministry and they were also looking for a young woman from the college to work under the youth pastor’s wife and minister to the teen girls. I immediately told them about this awesome young woman named Lisa that I knew who would love to have that position. So shortly thereafter Lisa and I were off and running working in Teens Unlimited and going to Bible college and more miracles were about to begin… Aflame For God – Teens Unlimited

“When the Spirit was outpoured the disciples were all filled with power from on high, the most unlettered tongue could silence gainsayers, and with its new fire burn its way through obstacles as flames fanned by mighty winds sweep through forests.”- Arthur T. Pierson

Read the beginning of the series HERE

I arrived at Baptist Bible College in Springfield, Missouri in August of 1984. I was beyond excited and a little scared about being away from home for the first time in my life. The first day I signed up for classes and then I found out that Baptist Temple, one of the churches in the city, was having a two night conference to welcome the students for the new year and Dr. Jack Hyles was preaching! I couldn’t believe it! I was so excited. I went to the meeting that night and my world was wrecked. Dr. Hyles preached on Meet The Holy Spirit and he made the sweet third person of the Trinity seem so wonderful that I wanted to know Him more than anything in the world. I remember walking around the campus until curfew crying out to the Lord to let me know Him like that. The next night Dr. Hyles devastated me with a sermon called The Fullness of the Holy Spirit. He preached about how the power of Luke 24:47 and Acts 1:8 was for today and was for me. He told stories about men like Wesley, Spurgeon, Whitefield, Evans, Finney, Moody, and others who had counted on and depended on an anointing of the Holy Spirit to do their work and of the miraculous results they had experienced as a result. My heart burned as I listened and hot tears rolled down my face. I felt that I would die if I couldn’t have that power from on high to win souls for Christ. I bought both tapes of the messages before I left that night and over the next several weeks I listened to them scores of times until I literally memorized every word. I got a job at night about 5 miles from the school and I would walk to work and listen to those sermons over and over again and cry and pray and beg God to let me know His power like that. I eventually wore them out to where they wouldn’t play in my walkman cassette player anymore.

I began getting up every morning at 5:00 am and I would run to Doling Park and spend a couple of hours in prayer before going to class. I would walk the campus at night and pray until curfew. Then I would sneak out of my bed and steal down to the laundry room after curfew and pray sometimes all night begging God to use me, to make me a preacher, to let me in on a mighty work, to give me souls for His kingdom. I began to fast for days at a time. I lost a lot of weight (and I didn’t have any to lose back then). I was doing well in school and loving what I was studying but I couldn’t get those stories of Holy Spirit anointing on the preachers of old out of my head. I wanted to be used of God or die. It was a sweet time as I got to know the Lord in a deeper way. I had stumbled across Psalm 63 and it became and remains to this day the prayer of my heart.

 
[quote]Psa. 63:1 O God, You are my God; I shall seek You earnestly; My soul thirsts for You, my flesh yearns for You, In a dry and weary land where there is no water. 2 Thus I have seen You in the sanctuary, To see Your power and Your glory. 3 Because Your lovingkindness is better than life, My lips will praise You. 4 So I will bless You as long as I live; I will lift up my hands in Your name. 5 My soul is satisfied as with marrow and fatness, And my mouth offers praises with joyful lips. 6 When I remember You on my bed, I meditate on You in the night watches, 7 For You have been my help, And in the shadow of Your wings I sing for joy. 8 My soul follows hard after You; Your right hand upholds me.[/quote]
 

I have prayed that prayer or a portion of it nearly every day of my life since. It truly expresses the cry of my soul.

I began going to the college bookstore and looking for books that would tell me more about power from on high and being used of God in mighty ways. The first two I found wrecked my world worse than I could have imagined. They were both written by Oswald J. Smith, world renowned pastor and missionary statesman, and they were entitled A Passion For Souls and The Man God Uses. Oh my soul! My eyes are welling up with tears as I try to type the titles. Here is an excerpt from the book A Passion For Souls to give you a taste of what God was searing into my soul,

 
[quote]”But oh, to realize and know that souls, precious, never dying souls are perishing all around us, going out into the blackness of darkness and despair, eternally lost, and yet to feel no anguish, shed no tears, know no travail! How cold our hearts are! How little we know of the compassion of Jesus! And yet God can give us this, and the fault is ours if we do not have it. Who is really travailing in prayer? How many, even of our most spiritual Christian leaders are content to spend a few minutes a day on their knees, and then pride themselves on the time they have given to God! We expect extraordinary results, and extraordinary results are quite possible; signs and wonders will follow, but only through extraordinary efforts in the spiritual realm. Hence, nothing short of continuous, agonizing pleading for souls, hours upon hours, days and nights of prayer, will ever avail.”[/quote]
 

I can’t describe to you how my heart burned to have the anointing of the Spirit and see His power and His glory. I went back and re-read Leonard Ravenhill’s Why Revival Tarries and I saw that the first chapter was With All Thy Getting, Get Unction, unction being another biblical word for Holy Spirit power. How my heart burned as I read,

 
[quote]”Unction cannot be learned, only earned by prayer. Unction is God’s knighthood for the soldier-preacher who has wrestled in prayer and gained the victory. Victory is not won in the pulpit by firing intellectual bullets or wisecracks, but in the prayer closet; it is won or lost before the preacher’s foot enters the pulpit. Unction is like dynamite.”[/quote]
 

I was so desperate to be used of God. I started a journal to track my progress and keep me accountable to my times with God. I also recorded my impressions from God and many, many specific answers to prayer. Going back and reading those journals today I ache for the young man who wrote those words and at the same time my heart is stirred to regain some of that youthful passion and pursuit of God’s power for His glory.

I had been at Bible college for about 3 months and I was very homesick and so was my roommate whose girlfriend was from my church back home so we devised a plan to leave right after classes on Friday and drive the 850 miles home, see our families, go to church on Sunday morning, leave after church and drive back in time to go to classes on Monday morning and this we did. It was a crazy trip but the life changing thing for me was that while I was home for those 30 hours or so someone handed me a cassette of a sermon by Dr. Jack Hyles entitled Fresh Oil and it was about the anointing of the Holy Spirit for power in ministry. It was like pouring gas on a bonfire. I once again wore this tape out over the next few months.

I have always been grateful that God wouldn’t let me go about this. I am grateful that He created a hunger in me for Him that, though at times of discouragement has sometimes waned, has never never left me. He created a fire in my heart and a radical passion to see His power and glory that has never been quenched.

It wasn’t all reading, fasting, and praying though. I had developed a group of friends who were passionate about Christ and we enjoyed many activities together all centered around church of course. Springfield, Missouri is the world headquarters of my denomination at the time, Baptist Bible Fellowship International, and the world headquarters of The Assemblies of God denomination and there were 4 Christian colleges in this relatively small town so needless to say, there was some kind of Christian concert, revival, Bible conference, Christian film series, etc. going on every week and we enjoyed many of them. Every day we had chapel and the college would bring in a different preacher from around the country and the huge college choir would boom out hymns and it was amazing. I’ll never forget them singing The Solid Rock like every day. It quickly became my favorite hymn. I would sing out at the top of my voice,

 
[quote]”My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus blood and righteousness. I dare not trust the sweetest frame but wholly lean on Jesus name. On Christ the solid rock I stand, all other ground is sinking sand.”[/quote]
 

After battling Satan and his hordes at Manzano High School for 2 years this seemed like heaven. We were seated for chapel alphabetically by last name and with my last name being Bullen I was seated on the second row of the large auditorium. Every day I would glance up into the choir loft at this pretty redhead that was singing in the alto section. She always caught my eye, not only because she was pretty and a redhead but because I could swear that every time I looked up there she was smiling at me. It was a huge auditorium and even from the second row I couldn’t see her well enough to know for sure. I figured it was probably just my imagination but as it turns out… but that is a story for another post. Aflame for God 7 – The Pretty Redhead

Bill Byrd and I received a great blessing yesterday. We were able to spend an hour and a half at the feet of Omar Garcia, missions pastor at Kingsland Baptist Church in Katy. Omar has lead more than 60 mission trips all over the world. Bill had introduced me to Omar’s blog, Go Beyond: Live Adventurously For God about a year ago and what refreshment and affirmation it has brought us on many occasions. Well yesterday we had the chance to visit with him and what a well of wisdom and insight he is! I wanted to share some of the tidbits that I came away with.

First, he explained his passion for “Go Beyond”

In each of our lives there is a line that marks the farthest we’ve ever been or the most we’ve ever done for God and His purposes. Everything on our side of that line is familiar, convenient, manageable, and comfortable. No big surprises, no daunting challenges, no uncharted territory. Crossing that line requires a commitment to venture to places we’ve never been and the willingness to engage people we’ve never met. Only those with the courage to overcome their fears and who have the determination to persevere will dare to cross that line. All others will keep a safe distance away from it.

We must go beyond — stepping boldly across the line in order to advance the interests of God’s kingdom in our world. I have heard people remark about how they long to be a part of something exciting for the kingdom, only to watch them aggressively avoid the context in which these things happen. We must be willing to place ourselves in a context where we will see God work in and through us in new and exciting ways, in ways we never imagined. We must be willing to spend ourselves for God and His purposes — to work toward the day when the earth will be filled with the knowledge of God as the waters cover the sea.

Step across the line and Go Beyond. Adventure awaits!

Omar said that danger, and sacrifice, and hardship are on the other side of that line but the miracles are also on the other side of that line… wonderful thought! Another way that he described it that just fascinates me is this, “When Jesus saw Peter, Andrew, and John on the shore of the Sea of Galilee and said to them, ‘follow Me and I will make you fishers of men’, had they not followed and instead continued their fishing enterprise, it wouldn’t necessarily have meant that they couldn’t have still been supportive of Jesus and believed that He was the Messiah, after all, He only asked 12 to “follow” Him in the way that He was asking them to, BUT if they hadn’t left the shore and followed Him think about what they would have missed out on. The Sea of Galilee was their “comfort zone.” Jesus essentially asked them to leave their boats, nets, and the greatest one day catch of fish their little business had ever seen. (Luke 5:1-11) He was asking them to cross the line and Go Beyond. Think of the things they witnessed and participated in though because of that one decision to leave the shore and follow Him. Theoretically they could have still been good believers and gone to heaven if they had stayed at the Sea of Galilee but they never would have known Jesus intimately and they never would have changed the world. Omar said, “We always have to be examining, ‘has this become my new Sea of Galilee and am I now comfortable here and is Jesus calling me to Go Beyond?'”

Second, Omar talked about the difference between being “missions minded” and being “missional.” You can be missions minded and give to missions and pray for missionaries and not be obeying the great commission. Jesus said, “Go ye into all the world.” Missional is when we take ownership of the great commission and we start ministering to people everywhere we go, here and abroad. He also talked about “peripheral compassion” where as we go through our daily lives we keep our eyes peeled for things happening right next to us that if we are not living missional lives and not realizing that we are to be “Jesus with skin on” we could very easily walk by and not notice but if we have peripheral compassion then we see these things and stop and do something rather than just walk on by.

Third, Omar said something that absolutely brought a battle that has been raging in my soul for the last several years to peace in one moment. It was incredible. He used this example. If you ask a person in the west, “who is the best Christian alive?” most people would say, “Billy Graham,” but if you asked a person in the east the same question they would say, “Mother Teresa.” Omar went on to point out that this illustrates the difference in thinking between the east and west. Billy Graham represents “proclamation” whereas Mother Teresa represents “incarnation.” Then Omar said something that blew my mind. He said, “what we need to do is get Billy Graham and Mother Teresa to the altar and get them married because true Christlikeness must be an equal dose of both proclamation (speaking the gospel) and incarnation (showing the gospel).” Wow! That is the answer! Jesus embodied both and so must we. I was reminded of two of my favorite verses in the Bible relating to Jesus, Acts 10:38 “You know of Jesus of Nazareth, how God anointed Him with the Holy Spirit and with power, and how He went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with Him. Mark 1:38 He (Jesus) said to them, “Let us go somewhere else to the towns nearby, so that I may preach there also; for that is what I came for.”

Fourth, Omar shared with us the difference between ministering “Attractionally” and “Incarnationally.” The modern American church, for the most part, employs the strategy of ministering by attraction. Come and see. Come and hear our special speaker, or partake in our many programs, or attend our concert, etc. (But this model, this strategy is never employed in the scripture. Jesus didn’t rent out a coliseum and sell tickets to come see the Messiah. – my thoughts)

Omar pointed out that the strategy of ministering by incarnation (being Jesus with skin on) earns us the right to speak into people’s lives. When we serve and help and invest in people and the community then the church becomes indispensable to the community. Omar gave the example of the time that Gallery Furniture burned down here and because the owner Mattress Mack has given so much to the community, people were donating and helping and pleading for Mack to rebuild because they couldn’t imagine Houston without Gallery Furniture and yet churches close down every week in Houston and no one is pleading with them to stay, no one is saying, “this community needs you pastor” all because the church has not become such a help to the community that they can’t imagine not having them around. Stunning observation.

Fifth, Ways vs. Works. Omar shared with us another nugget which came from Psalm 103:7 He made known His ways to Moses, His works to the sons of Israel. He pointed out that throughout the story of the Exodus Moses is calm and trusting the Lord because he understood His ways i.e. that God is always working even when we can’t see what He is up to. But the children of Israel were always whining and complaining because they were only looking for His works. Three days after they see Him part the Red Sea and then close it upon the Egyptians they are whining about not having water and blaming Moses for bringing them out there to die. The difference between them and Moses was that Moses understood God’s ways and knew that God had brought them out there and that He would see them through (faith) whereas the Israelites were only surviving from work to work, sign to sign (sight). We must learn the ways of God so that when we don’t see His works immediately we can remain calm and strong and keep moving forward. This reminds me of one of my favorite verses in the Bible. It appears in what we call the Hall of Faith in Hebrews 11. It is talking about the things that Moses did by faith and in verse 27 it says, By faith he left Egypt, not fearing the king’s anger; he persevered because he saw him who is invisible. If we are going to persevere in missions, ministry, marriage, etc. we must see Him who is invisible. We must know His ways.

There was so much more but I will end with one last thing that was very encouraging. Sixth, he talked about being a “bigger – picture person.” This is someone who keeps the overall view of how all the little tasks, little struggles, and little contributions to God’s kingdom add up by the power of the Holy Spirit to make world changing differences. He talked about how the people who hold the ropes back home are just as critical as the ones climbing down the rope to rescue the lost. Omar recently wrote a blog on this very subject and I hope you will go there and read it. It is profound.

We were so blessed to visit with this soldier of the Lord and we look forward to continuing to glean from God’s working in his life and ministry.

Today I want to highlight a young man who has been a great inspiration to my life in the short time I have known him. Tyler Cox is the kind of young man who raises your hopes in the next generation and in the future of the body of Christ. Tyler is in his early 20’s but he has a passion and a vision beyond his years. Tyler and I have been to Colombia together a few times in the last year and I have been amazed at his heart and devotion. I recently had opportunity to interview Tyler about his missions vision. I will share his answers below and then follow that with an article that he recently wrote that really expresses his heart for Christ and the nations. Enjoy.

Tyler what got you interested in missions?

What got me interested in missions was God calling me to go to Brazil which was my first mission trip. I can’t say that at the time I was interested in missions, but when I got back from Brazil that completely changed my perspective. It never really occurred to me that Christ’s passion was to spread His name to all of the earth, and not just America. I have now been on 5 mission trips since then and planning on going on another 2 over the summer. God completely provides all the funds and He is surely glorified.

What was your first mission trip like?

My first mission trip was Soa Paulo Brazil. It was a street evangelism trip with Restoration Ministries. We went out into the slumbs and proclaimed God’s word to the poor and unloved. It was an incredible experience. I saw a lot of things that I never would have seen in the states. Christ revealed Himself to me in a way that I’ve never seen.

How many countries have you visited?

So far I have been on 5 trips. Once to Brazil, El Salvador, Guatemala, and twice to Colombia. All brought different challenges and different experiences. I’m very humbled and blessed to be apart of these trips. God’s grace has allowed me to cross paths with many great people. People who love and fear God and long for the lost to get found.

What was your greatest experience on the mission field?

I must say the greatest experience I had was the second time I went to Colombia. Going once to a country is one thing, but going twice is a whole other. We visited different orphanages in Colombia. Well, the best experience (and also one of the most joyful moments of my life) was going back to the orphanages and the kids saying “Tyler Tyler Tyler”. It was awesome. They really do remember you. I fell in love with those kids.

What are your plans for the future?

This summer I plan to go back to Colombia (which is now becoming a second home to me haha) in June, and El Salvador again in August. As for my long term plans? That’s up to God right now. I hope and pray that he uses me for great things that will glorify his name. I do plan on getting some sort of seminary degree. Hopefully I will work for some sort of ministry. But God could lead me anywhere in the next couple years and I will go wherever He tells me to go.

This is an article that Tyler wrote shortly after returning from Colombia in January 2011…

“Destitute of the Fire of God, nothing else counts; possessing Fire, nothing else matters.”- Samuel Chadwick  

Read the beginning of the series HERE

Shortly after school started in 1983 it was announced that Jerry Johnston was coming to our church to hold a week long city wide crusade. We were beside ourselves with excitement. Usually when Jerry went to a city he would hold LIFE school assemblies in every high school in town to talk about suicide and share his hope in Jesus Christ. We were enthralled that he would be speaking at Manzano High! But as Albuquerque, New Mexico is not in the Bible belt and not used to such things, Jerry was denied entrance into all of the schools in Albuquerque. So Jerry sat down with my brother and me and said very intently, “If I can’t go into the schools, I want you two and your Bible club to bring the schools to me!” We said, “Tell us what to do!” He gave us boxes and boxes of tickets, brochures, and posters and on them were printed Jerry Johnston Ministries presents PIZZA BLAST. Come here about LIFE and get all of the free pizza you can eat. And it gave the date, time, and location. He looked us in the eyes and said, “I want all of these tickets and posters and brochures scattered all over Albuquerque and I want you guys to have 1000 teens here on Friday night!” (This was on the preceding Sunday). We told Jerry, “Don’t worry sir, we will have them here; you can count on us!” We left that meeting excited and scared to death! What had we just said?! We went to school the next morning and sat our Bible club down and said very intently, “If the schools won’t let Jerry come then we need to…” well you get the picture. We started praying, fasting, and talking to everyone about the PIZZA BLAST on Friday night. We gave everyone of the 4000 students in our school at least one ticket that week and we went to other high schools and mingled with the crowds as if we belonged there and handed out tickets. We attended the crusade each night that week and heard Jerry preach which further inflamed us for Christ. We gave Jerry updates of how it was going. It was so exciting. One night after the service we took the posters to several high schools and put them up all over the place. We had prayer meetings late at night. By now you see our parents, friends, teachers, etc. were scared to even question what craziness we were up to. They knew that God was driving us because they could see the fruit and the transformations taking place.

Friday night finally came. We ran the vans to pick people up. When we got to the 2 thousand seat auditorium it was packed out with teens and adults. I could see classmates everywhere and I knew that God had answered ours and Jerry’s prayers. The place was so packed that I had to sit in the aisle at the back which was great because I could see everyone in front of me. When Jerry started to preach I felt a wave of the the Holy Spirit sweep across the room and I knew God was going to do something big for our city and for our school. I also felt a deep burning, churning, warfare type urge to pray. I started praying like I had never prayed before. I started begging God to give us souls for our labors. I prayed so hard that I got physically ill and had to step out for a moment and get some air. My youth pastor came to see if I was ok and I remember saying, “I just want to die if God doesn’t give me souls.” We went back in and I continued to pray. When Jerry gave the invitation, hundreds of people flooded to the altars to receive Christ. It was the greatest thing I had ever seen. I saw some of the worst kids in our school getting saved that night. I was awed by the power of God and His goodness. I can’t remember how many young people from Manzano trusted Christ that night but it was over 100. We were given the decision cards (which had a space for which high school you attended) from all of the students at Manzano that came forward that night and we began to follow up and work at discipleship. We rejoiced with Jerry, our church, and our Bible club that God had done beyond what we had hoped.

We quickly realized that we needed more than Bible club each day and youth group on Sunday to disciple these kids and the rest that were still being saved in the Bible club each day so we started a Monday night teen church and called it Youth On Fire. We met in the gymnasium of our church which was providential because the gym, called the Dennis Elliott Memorial Youth Center, was built in memory of my uncle who was killed by a drunk teenager in 1970. My uncle who was 18 lived across the street from me. He was a sold out Christian young man and my hero. He’s the first person I ever remember telling me about Jesus. He died when I was 5. There were over 1000 people at his funeral and the church built the gym in the hopes that it would help get young people off the street and that is exactly what Youth On Fire was about. We would meet every Monday night from 7:00 – 9:00 pm. The first hour we would play games and have sports and then the second hour we would have worship and preaching. It was an awesome ministry. My brother and I would trade off preaching each week and later when we had some preachers boys rise up out of our group of converts that we were discipling they would alternate preaching with us. We had people saved (adults and teens), we counseled, fed homeless people, had all night prayer meetings, and so on. We were going going going and God was blessing our youthful fire and devotion with growth and great results.

As the school year came to a close I began to think about my future and I began to pray that God would allow me to attend Baptist Bible College in Springfield, Missouri. Many of my uncles and cousins had attended there and I wanted to go there so bad. I had a little money from working with my dad in construction but I needed more finances and a way to get there. My brother and I shared a car but I needed to leave it behind so that he could continue Manzano Bible Club and Youth On Fire while I was at college. Not long after I started praying my pastor called me in and told me that some one had decided to anonymously support me $100 a month while I was at BBC. Praise God! I also found out that two teens from our church and a street girl that had been saved there wanted to go also and I could ride to college with them! I’ll never forget how excited I was getting ready to go and what a surreal feeling it was when I hugged and kissed my family goodbye and headed east for Bible College. I didn’t know what the future held but I sensed that it was going to be amazing and I was not mistaken… Aflame For God 6 – God’s Knighthood For The Soldier-Preacher

“Set a fire down in my soul that I can’t contain and I can’t control… I want more of you God.” – Will Reagan and The United Pursuit Band

Read the beginning of the series HERE

Our Bible club was underway and within a couple of months we were filling up the youth ministry at our church with teens who were being saved daily in the halls, classrooms, and library of our high school. Our youth pastor eventually convinced the church to designate two 15-passenger vans with drivers and every Sunday morning we would make the rounds and pick up “our kids” from the Manzano Bible Club. The most we ever brought on one Sunday was 42. It was exhilarating being on God’s team and seeing Him respond in big ways as a result of the simple childlike obedience of a few teens to speak about Jesus to someone everyday… and pray like crazy ☺

It wasn’t long before we were getting invitations to go speak at other churches and ministries about what was happening at Manzano. The first one I remember was especially exciting because it meant traveling with our youth pastor to another city about 200 miles away. We were to share our story at a church called Tabernacle Baptist Church in Roswell, New Mexico. (The amazing providence is that less than 3 years later I would be the youth pastor of this very church and God would launch an amazing ministry there… but that is for another post) On the way there our youth pastor asked us if we knew how to prepare a sermon. I answered, “Sure! You just pick a subject; find every verse in the Bible that relates to that subject, and preach about it.” Brother Rick very patiently agreed that was one way to do it but would we like to learn about using an introduction, 3 point outline, illustrations, and conclusion. We said, “great!” so the rest of the trip he mentored us in sermon preparation and delivery. It was such a blessing! We poured our hearts out and came home rejoicing. We were now itinerant evangelists just like Jerry Johnston! ☺

Not long after this, Dr. Jack Hyles (now in heaven) was preaching a conference at our church and so we took off from school to go. On the way to the conference I stopped and bought my first necktie. (In the picture below) My youth pastor taught me how to tie a single Windsor knot and I was ready for the conference. It was a blast and I remember sitting there with tears running down my face amazed that I was having this much fun at a preaching conference. Wow! Things had sure changed in my heart. There was this longing that can’t be described by words to preach and be used by God to transform the hearts of people the way my heart had been transformed. Dr. Hyles from that moment on would have a dramatic impact on my life and thinking.

Another thing that happened at this conference was I noticed that my brother and I were the only ones at the conference who weren’t wearing suits. Consequently, the next week we had our mom take us to Western Warehouse (we were still cowboys after all) and we each purchased a three-piece western cut suit. We polished up our cowboy boots and we were ready to join the preaching circuit. ☺ I have rarely felt as exhilarated as I was the first Sunday I walked into church with that new suit on. I can still smell the wool.
 

Not long after, my pastor, Dr. Curtis Goldman (now in heaven) asked me to preach for him on New Years Eve 1982. I couldn’t believe it! Our church of 1000 people was huge to me and I was so excited and scared at the same time. I prayed and fasted and studied for days and felt the Lord leading me to challenge the congregation with the fact that Jesus had said, “If the world hated me it will hate you.” As I looked at the church and the Christians around me and as I read and studied the Bible, the largest dichotomy that I had observed was that the Christians I knew, for the most part, were not turning the world upside down and were not being persecuted for it. The Sunday came and I stepped into the pulpit and experienced something for the first time that I have enjoyed many times since and came later to understand as the anointing of the Holy Spirit. I preached my heart out on The Persecution of the Righteous (actually audio HERE) and explained to the people that a direct indicator of whether they were following Jesus or not was the amount of or lack of persecution taking place in there lives. I shared passages such as

 
[quote]Luke 6:22 – 26 22 “Blessed are you when men hate you, and ostracize you, and insult you, and scorn your name as evil, for the sake of the Son of Man. 23 “Be glad in that day and leap [for joy], for behold, your reward is great in heaven. For in the same way their fathers used to treat the prophets. 24 “But woe to you who are rich, for you are receiving your comfort in full. 25 “Woe to you who are well-fed now, for you shall be hungry. Woe [to you] who laugh now, for you shall mourn and weep. 26 “Woe [to you] when all men speak well of you, for their fathers used to treat the false prophets in the same way.”[/quote]

I challenged them to look at their lives and ask themselves the question, “Does the world hate me?”
 
[quote]John 15:19 “If you were of the world, the world would love its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, because of this the world hates you.”[/quote]

I was surprised at how many people came to me after the message and said that they were really challenged to look at their lives. Praise God! I was equally surprised at the number of people, whom I looked up to, who came to me and warned me to be careful of taking my newfound faith too seriously. I was satisfied in my spirit that I had spoken the truth in love and I trusted God to give the increase.

 

I spent the rest of that school year building the Manzano Bible Club, preaching where and when I could, and reading and studying and listening to sermons like a madman. Some of the books that touched me deeply early on were Hudson Taylor’s Spiritual Secret, Why Revival Tarries, Sodom Had No Bible, both by Leonard Ravenhill, God’s Smuggler by Brother Andrew, Absolute Surrender by Andrew Murray, and biographies of George Mueller, Adoniram Judson, and William Carey. These books painted for me a radical Christianity that I didn’t see around me and I longed for it. As David said in Psalm 63 I thirsted for it as in a dry and thirsty land where no water is. As I tried to live what I read in the scripture and these books the persecution at home, school, and church was intense at times. I continually discovered though that the overwhelming joy of following what the Bible said over what man said and the joy of seeing God’s fingerprints all over our ministry as a result overcame all discouragement. The school year ended and I spent the summer working in construction with my dad.

 

That summer, July of 1983, I also returned to Singing Hills Youth Camp and once again Jerry Johnston was there but this time he was aware of our ministry and we were able to spend some awesome time with him and at the end of the camp he invited us to come on stage with him and share our testimony of what God had done the previous year! It was heady stuff getting to speak on stage with the man whom God had used to lead us to Him. He was also going to be speaking the next week at the camp and he invited us to come back and share our testimony then also. As it so happened, our uncle’s church from Dodge City Kansas was going to be there and our cousin was the youth pastor. Their hearing our testimony lit a fire in their teenagers to go back to Kansas and turn their world upside down for God. Little did I know that less than 4 years later I would be a youth evangelist and would be holding a week long revival in that Dodge City church. But that is a story for another post. We went back to Manzano that next year even more on fire than before and I will share about that in Aflame For God 5 – Youth on Fire.

 

Todo gloria a ti Dios! All the glory to you God. This entire trip has vastly exceeded our wildest expectations and today was the crowning glory. I will attempt to share how awesome our God was today but as you know He defies words. Several weeks ago our brother and fellow board member Shoby had lunch with a Colombian man, Jair, who is in ministry in Houston and the Lord really knitted their spirits together. When Jair found out we were coming to Colombia he sent Bill Byrd the name of his former pastor and his wife here in Bogota. We connected with the wife, Lilliana on Facebook and they were very excited to meet us and invited us to their church today. When we called Lilliana yesterday she said, “Oh, I have been praying and praying that you would come!” They started this church 10 months ago and it is thriving. It is called Comunidad Cristiana Fundamentos. Three of the Goddaughters were able to come with us and so we arrived at this church about 10:00 am. Other than Lilliana, Jair’s friend, whom we had spoken to on Facebook, we knew no one there or so we thought. How wonderful for God to surprise us again because as we walked in we saw several of our dear friends from Fundacion Nuevo Mundo! We hugged and then met Lilliana and her husband Pastor Hector and many new friends there at the church. It was beautiful. There were even a couple of our young friends from the safe house that always visit on our mission trips. Tears welled up in my eyes as I looked over this beautiful congregation of Colombian believers whose faces were beaming because they were so excited that the Americanos had come to worship with them today. Shortly after we walked in I got another surprise. Pastors Hector and Lilliana asked me if I had come prepared to preach the word today. At first I thought they meant a small testimony about Orphan Hope so I said, “Sure, how much time do you want me to share” To my great surprise and joy they said, “Oh, 30 or 45 minutes would be fine.” I immediately thought, “I wish I had brought some sermon notes.” Then I looked down and saw my laptop bag in my hand and laughed at myself because I have all of my sermons on my computer. Praise God! Be ready in season and out of season… I quickly shot a text to everyone in my family at home and said, “Pray for me, I’m about to preach on the waterfall of grace in a church in Colombia!” Then I turned to my dear brother Luis and said, “Are you ready to preach with me?” And like he always does he said, “I got your back brother!” Whoo hoo! We gathered for worship and the pastors daughter led worship with her guitar and it was so anointed I started weeping and I thought, “Lord, how am I going to preach if I’m crying like this?” It was indescribable worshipping with these believers. The songs we knew but they were in Spanish but they had the words up on the wall so we were able to sing along fairly well. There was reading of scripture, and exhortation and then it was my turn. Luis and I stepped up and began to share about the amazing grace of God. The Holy Spirit helped us greatly and there were amens, and applause, and tears, and raised hands and it was a blessed time as we shared a Cascada de Gracia or Waterfall of Grace. You can click on the title to hear the sermon. I shared my testimony and then told about my 8 trips to Colombia and of our vision for the nations. Luis did a tremendous job translating for me and then also gave his testimony of standing on the stage at our Share the Hope event in December and looking out at 340 Texans who were gathered to help the orphans of his country and how that moved him and touched him. The people were very moved by his story. After a few people gave testimonies about the message. One lady stood weeping and told us that she had been orphaned at 7 years old and that she was so grateful for what we were doing for the orphans in Colombia and she wanted to help. Another lady was crying because she had her son taken away three years ago and now she has given her life to the Lord and been transformed and she is working to get her son back. She said she wants to help. A man stood who is one of our friends from the orphanage and told how wonderful the work we do is and how the children wait out the months until we return again and how happy we make them. Then a lady came forward with a little boy in her arms that suffers from hip displacement and asked Luis and I to pray for his healing. We laid hands on him and prayed. Then the most amazing thing happened. Our friend from Nuevo Mundo stood and she was weeping and she looked straight at me and said, “I want to praise God for Matt’s heart and for the vision that this ministry has for Colombia. 16 years ago when I was a new believer I heard a foreign preacher in a conference say, ‘I believe that God is drawing people form around the world to Colombia because it is going to be His headquarters for reaching the rest of Latin America. I believe there is a great revival coming to Colombia.'” and then she continued, “I have been praying for 16 years for that revival and I believe that you are the answer to my prayers.” I looked over at Dave and Gail Beach because it was almost word for word what we had said to each other before coming on the trip and it was almost word for word with what Ed said to us on the plane on the way down. Dave’s face was bright red and he looked at me and I looked at him knowing that the hair was standing up on the back of his neck like it was on mine. Bill was smiling from ear to ear. I looked over at Luis and he just shook his head and smiled. We then spent some time hugging and kissing everyone in the room (which is Colombian custom) and then getting photos with everyone. It was over the top blessed. We sat down with Pastor Hector and Lilliana and talked about the future. Amazingly enough, he is also a psychologist who works in an orphanage and she is an educator. They offered their help and time and they want to come on the mission trip in June. It is unbelievable how precious these people and their two daughters that we met are. They will be great assets in our ministry. As we broke up our meeting with them we made plans to bring our whole team to their church on June 19, 2011 and invite some other local Christians that we know here in Bogota and bring in lunch and have a wonderful day of it with God’s people here. They were very excited and asked me to preach again when we come. I agreed but we told them that we also want to hear Pastor Hector as well so we agreed to split our time and both bring a message that day! I can hardly wait! Praise God! The next personal blessing was as we were walking out Luis called me over and introduced me to Sophia. She shared that she is a linguist and a translator for the Colombian army. Today was her first time at the church and she called it a miracle that she was even there. She told me that she started weeping when I prayed before my sermon and didn’t stop until the end. She said that when I prayed for the Holy Spirit to anoint my lips and their ears that she felt the presence of God surround her. Then she said something that was very touching for me personally. She said that the part of my sermon about multi-generational discipleship and the fact that one family can change the world really impacted her because she believes that the revival that is coming to Colombia as shared in the prophecy by the other lady must begin in the family and she was glad that I told about my family because God has prepared me to heal the families of Colombia. Wow!! What a service!

What sweeter way to start the day than having a group of orphan girls come bouncing into the hotel just as we were finishing breakfast? We shared hugs and kisses all the way around and then pulled out the gifts that we and others had sent for the girls. It is a joy unspeakable every time we are in the presence of these sweet little forgotten lambs. I was touched beyond words when my sweet Goddaughter Ginary, who just spent 3 weeks with my family in December, squeezed me tight and said, “I love you” in English. No success, money, position, rank, or earthly treasure can compete with the joy these children bring me and the rest of our team each time we are here. They were delighted with their gifts and we shared some catching up stories and then it was time to head out to our first meeting with the girls in tow.

We had received word that there was a safe house (there are only 3 or 4 in all of Bogota) that we hadn’t heard of or visited before and so we headed out to find it and see if we could tour it and find out how they run their home. We pulled up to the nondescript brick building tucked in a row of similar buildings along this street. We rang the bell and to our utter surprise and amazement our sweet friend Lilliana opened the door. She was as shocked to see us as were to see her. What a sweet little providence that in a city of 8,000,000 people, we go to a strange house and our friend answers the door. Lilliana used to work at the girls orphanage in Madrid that we always visit on our mission trips. She was a big help to two of the girls that are or will be adopted soon. Anyhow, unbeknownst to us, Lilliana had began working at this new safe house 4 months ago because it was much closer to her home. She gave us a tour of the home and shared with us many important pieces of information that go together like a giant puzzle with the other things we have been learning this week. We really admired their model and many of their strategies. It was a very profitable meeting. They also have orphanages as well and she begged us to bring our team to their orphanages the next time we come.

We took the girls to lunch and then to the park for a relaxing afternoon of horseplay, and hugs, and jokes, and some testimony. It never ceases to amaze me at the transformation in these children just because we have reached out as the hands of Jesus to love them and share with them our passion for God. My own Goddaughter Ginary has become a secure, content, and hopeful young woman since my family met her and made her a part of our long distance family 2 years ago. Ginary grew up in the dump rummaging for scraps. Consequently, when I met this beautiful girl she was completely illiterate. Because she was excited to have a Godfather and wanted so bad to be able to communicate with me she finally agreed at the age of 15 to start school and learn to read and write. Now she is well on her way and very motivated. She told me today that she can’t be with me tomorrow morning because she has school but she will come after lunch when school lets out and spend the afternoon with me. Wow! Such a change in a short period of time. The love of God demonstrated through His children is a very powerful agent of hope and change. Praise God.

Luis Escobar’s dad lives 1/2 the year in Bogota and the other 1/2 in Florida and he was in town today so Luis invited him to join our merry band for dinner. We had a marvelous time and it was really sweet to watch Luis’ dad enjoy the girls and perhaps catch a little of the vision of what his son is trying to do for the children of Colombia. He ended up buying our dinner and assured us that we would see him again. What a blessing!

It was a wonderful day and we came back to my room for some strategy and prayer and then off to bed. Thank you all who are supporting us in so many ways. We love you all.

Another wonderful day today in the presence of the Lord and some of His choice soldiers. We started out the day with a meeting at the national headquarters of ICBF. We met with the head of adoptions for the nation of Colombia and her assistant for 2 1/2 hours regarding our upcoming Texas Vacation Program. We obtained the answers to many of our questions and learned many new things about the vacation and adoption processes in Colombia. Some amazing statistics came through today that play right into everything Orphan Hope is working on. There are 27,000 adoptable orphans in Colombia between the ages of 8 and 15. The shocking thing is that this represents only about 20% of the total number of children in orphanages in Colombia and that larger number only represents the small portion of orphans who are in orphanages. No one knows the number of orphans living on the streets and in the sewers. Children On The Brink estimated the total to be 577,000 in 2005 but the people we have talked to here say that it is in the millions. This is why we must continue to bring mission trips here and have vacation programs and facilitate adoptions. And here is the reason we must have safe houses once the children age out of the orphanages at 18. Every year in Colombia 5000 children age out, 800 a year in Bogota alone. 15% of these kids will commit suicide within two years and another 60% will end up in prostitution or prison. This is why we are here. We must work and push and pray to help these beautiful children to find Jesus and have a life in His grace. We cannot look the other way and pretend that it is someone else’s problem. God has clearly called and equipped us to turn this country upside down for Him and we must obey.

We had a marvelous meeting and they were very complimentary of our vacation program last December and the adoptions and Padrinos that came out of it. They said that the older girls who couldn’t be adopted came back on fire for education and felt like they were not alone in the world! Then they said something that we kind of knew but it stunned us to hear them say it. They said, “You know, before you guys started coming Colombia’s Padrino program was solely internal in this country. Then you Texans started coming down and becoming Padrinos and then you helped us develop a program so that we had a defined, national Padrino program, and now we are taking that program to other agencies and other countries from what you guys started here.” We were stunned. God took some ordinary guys and gals over the last 4 years who came to Colombia and fell in love with some kids and wanted to have a way to take them out of the orphanage and spend family time with them and were committed to coming again and again and used them to change the program of an entire nation and develop something that will impact hundreds of children in the next few years. Who says ordinary people can’t change the world?

We left there giddy with what God is doing for us at national government levels and went to have lunch with 2 dear brothers from Fundacion Nuevo Mundo that we partner with here and we spent the whole afternoon learning from him about safe houses and orphanages and Jesus and spiritual warfare and facts and figures. It was amazing! We strategized about how we can work together in Bogota to impact more children. It was over the top anointed and we left there with a greater sense of urgency and surety that we were on the right path and working with the right people. We left there giddy with the possibilities and rejoicing at the people and counsel and help and resources that God continues to send us as we take one step of faith at a time. On the way to the restaurant for our dinner meeting we babbled about multiple safe houses and short, mid, and long term missionaries and interns and bringing radical sold out for Jesus college kids down to work in the streets and alliances with Christian ministries and Tres Dias Colombia and how it would be our training for servant leaders and on and on. “I AM the Lord! Is there anything to hard for me?” Dream Center Bogota anyone? 🙂

At our dinner meeting we met with the directors of two orphanages and our in country team and just had a wonderful time of fellowship and fun. We talked about old times and dreamed about the future and God just strengthened these relationships all around. It was a blessed time.

We came back to the hotel beat but blessed beyond words. We all gathered up in Luis and my room for prayer and some more dream building and strategizing and then drifted of to bed. God is doing this, it is huge, and we are tremendously blessed to be a part. Thank you all for your love and prayers.

We all said, “What a miraculous 48 hours this has been and we have 48 more hours to go! Tomorrow we go to visit a new safe house and learn from them and then we are having lunch with the Goddaughters!!! and spending the rest of the day with them. Sunday we have several ministries to meet with and the Goddaughters will be with us all day. Praise God.

I was so tired and weak last night as I was writing my Flight Down segment that I forgot a very big providence that occurred on the plane as well. Not long into our conversation with Jose, he handed us back a magazine with an article about orphans and said, “I just read this today and it sounds so much like what you guys are doing it is uncanny, you have to read it.” So we all read it and were amazed. It was about a fellow in London in 1843 that started a Safe House to take in street kids and disciple them for Christ. He started with one and then another and another and eventually 60,000 children came through his houses and many became doctors and lawyers and politicians, etc. So many things about the article were exactly what we have talked and dreamed about. It was a blow by blow description of what we want to do in Bogota. When we all finished the article and finished our oohing and aahing, I turned the magazine to the cover to see what it was and it was a Decision Magazine from the Billy Graham Association dated October 1995! Think about it! God put us right behind a missionary from Canada headed to Colombia who happened to be reading an old magazine from 1995 which happened to have an article about Safe Houses and he happened to overhear us talking about our ministry and started up a conversation and then handed the article back to us… Wow. Ok, now about today.

Oh fellow soldiers! Today was a vision expanding, dream building, major mission accomplishing day! Praise the Lord. Our team on this trip is, Bill and Sandy Byrd, Dave and Gail Beach, Luis Escobar and me. It has been a delight and honor to be here with these sweet saints. They are big thinkers and a huge encouragement to me. Our first order of business today was a meeting with our in country team. We had a wonderful 6 hour meeting where we finalized plans for our Texas Vacation Program this summer, and plans to open our first Safe House in Bogota. Some of our time was pure vision casting. Thinking and talking way outside the box and into the “miracle gap” as Matthew Barnett calls it. We talked about multiple safe houses, we talked about the prostitutes that stand on the street corners in south Bogota trying to sell their babies and strategies that we might employ some day to impact them. We talked wildly about our BIG God and what could be done in this city of 8,000,000 people for the Kingdom of our Savior. We talked about discipleship, and job training, and education, and staff, and young people coming down as interns, and 6 and 12 months missionaries coming down to minister. It was RADICAL and biblical and super enjoyable. We were able to get clarity on many details and that was very exciting as well. Our team was so like minded and harmonious and we just felt the Holy Spirit guiding the conversation and pushing us forward. Thank you Lord for sweet confirmation at every turn. After the meeting we drove to the headquarters of ICBF, (translated it means the Department of Colombian Family Welfare) and had a meeting with the representative that the Colombian government has assigned to assist us in establishing our first Safe House. He was a wonderful man and we talked about many subjects relating to helping Colombian children. The most encouraging thing though was as I was explaining about how God had drawn us to Colombia, his face brightened and he said, “You are Christians?” and we said, “yes” and he said, “wonderful, welcome to Colombia, we are excited about working with you because you will bring the example and the values that our children need.” He was very excited and animated and it just warmed our hearts that of all the people that could have been chosen to be our government representative, God has chosen this man who was excited about working with Christians. Thank you God. We left that meeting and went looking at properties for a potential Safe House. It was very exciting. One house we looked at was suggested by our in country representatives mother. I have met this mother and she is a radical believer. Well, this mother gets this feeling that she should go check out this one neighborhood in Bogota and so she drives through it and sees this house with a For Sale sign on it and calls her daughter and says, “I have found your Safe House.” 🙂 We don’t know anything about the property yet but it is exciting that people are out there looking for us. As we are driving through the neighborhoods Bill Byrd says, “Do they have any abandoned hospitals for sale?” (You would have to read the new book “The Cause Within You” by Matthew Barnett to get the full impact of the radical nature of that question) We all laughed at Bill as the goosebumps popped out on my arms… “I AM the Lord, is there anything to hard for me?”

We finished up the evening with more dream building talk and rejoiced that our little team had operated today so harmoniously, and with such shared faith and urgency, and that we had enjoyed the very real presence of God all day. To Him be the glory.

I usually don’t start my blog of each trip until the first full day but the plane ride down was so eventful and providential that I had to say something. Bill had arranged for all of us to sit together on the plane and so we were enjoying dream building and vision casting for the future of Orphan Hope, sharing things we were reading, and generally discussing what God was doing through us and around us. Suddenly the man in front of Dave, Gail, and I turned around and introduced himself as Jose. He was born in Mexico but went to Christ For The Nations college in Canada and stayed. He was on his way to Bogota with a team called New Beginnings International Christian Society that does camps for up to 500 kids all over Colombia. We had a wonderful visit with the whole team and exchanged contact information and ideas about how we might work together in the future to bring Christ to the children of Bogota. It was very exciting to meet with people who are, like us, just people whom God has touched with a radical passion and vision and have just launched out in faith and seen God partner with them in miraculous ways. It was refreshing and confirming for both ministries to hear how similar our stories were. Ed, the leader of the group said something that all of us here at Orphan Hope have felt and said and it made us look at each other when he said it. Ed said, “I believe that God is drawing people and ideas and resources to Colombia because it is going to be His headquarters for reaching the rest of Latin America.” Wow! We have all felt that very definitely and very strongly. I believe with all of my heart and I have felt the Spirit impressing upon me very strongly that we are only looking through the keyhole right now of what God wants to do for us and through us in Colombia and all of Latin America. I have also felt that we cannot ask anything too big from God for this ministry because His passion, vision, and urgency for this ministry is way ahead of ours. Like a patient Father, He is allowing us to see a little at a time until we catch up to Him in full faith and vision. It is mind blowing exciting and we all agreed on the plane tonight that we are very grateful and humbled to be on His team. Praise God!

“Aggressive Christianity is the world’s greatest need.” – A.B. Simpson

Read the beginning of the series HERE

One of the things that Jerry Johnston had done as a young preacher starting out at age 14 was to start a Bible club in his school in Kansas City, Kansas. He began winning his classmates to Christ and learned to preach as he discipled them. We had heard him tell about it at camp that week and so we were determined to start where he had started. School started on Monday, August 23, 1982 but it wasn’t until Thursday, August 26, 1982 that we were able to shift our classes around and start our Bible club. That Thursday we gathered some of our friends that would come and met in the library at lunch. I didn’t know what to do once we had them all seated around the table but I had heard somewhere that as a new believer you should start reading the Bible in the book of John so I figured the best place to start with these unbelievers was the book of John so I opened up my new leather bound Bible to John 1 and I started reading. I read John 1, 2, and 3 and when I got to the part in John 3 where Jesus tells Nicodemus that unless he is born again he cannot see the kingdom of heaven, I noticed that my brother was talking to our friend Ted Chavez and Ted had tears coming down his face. It wasn’t too long before my brother and Ted bowed their heads and Ted prayed to receive Christ as Savior. It was unbelievable! We left that library like we were walking on clouds. It felt like the book of Acts all over again. We praised and thanked the Lord for His Spirit moving.

When we got home we told our mom all about it and she made a wonderful suggestion. She said that we should start a notebook and write in it the names of the souls that God gave us each day. So we went in my dad’s office there in our home and got a brand new red spiral notebook. Here is the entry from the first day…

The Holy Spirit Bible Study

Started August 26, 1982

Ted Chavez accepted the Lord 8-26-82

That night we praised the Lord and prayed and rejoiced. The next day, Friday, August 27, 1982 we came to school with a boldness that God was going to turn our school upside down for Him. We started talking to everyone about Jesus and to our amazement some of them were so ready to hear it and so ready to place their faith in Jesus. Others were aggressive and had many questions that I couldn’t answer and I knew I would have to do much more studying. That Sunday we came to our youth group so excited to tell our youth pastor about what God was doing at Manzano High. He was shocked and thrilled and allowed us to give our testimony. After the service two girls, Cheri and Debbie, walked up and said they went to Manzano and they wanted to be a part of our club. We were elated to have some fellow soldiers from our church to help us.

The entry in our red spiral notebook the next week looked like this…

Charter Members: Matthew Bullen, Mark Bullen, Mike Meyers, Mark Malles, Glen Jorden, John Owens, Ted Chavez, Cheri Pendley, Debbie Greenwood.

Friday 8-27-82 saved

David Watkins (won him to Christ during Spanish class)

Paul Langley

Monday 8-30-82 saved

Micheal Granjean

Wednesday 9-1-82 saved

Jennifer Fox

Friday 9-2-82 saved

Jerry Hicks

Jennifer Taylor

Tuesday 9-7-82 saved

Morris Sanchez

We were off and running! I would write the names of the kids who came to Christ in the fly leaves of my Bible and then transfer them to the notebook each night. But in a very short time I ran out of space in my Bible. Over the next 2 years we would write the names of over 300 teens in that red notebook as having professed faith in Christ! We were living the book of Acts!

I started reading every Christian book I could get my hands on. I told my parents, grandparents, and friends that all I wanted for birthdays and Christmas were Christian books and they complied. We were witnessing every day and running into Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormons, Satanists, Agnostics, Atheists, you name it. I remember one time I was witnessing to a Satanist and he started foaming at the mouth and cursing and blaspheming and tried to bite me before his friends tackled him and dragged him away. In a short period of time we became known throughout the school as the Jesus Freaks and we started getting hauled into the principals office on a regular basis and threatened for witnessing. Part of the fun was running back to the rest of the club and telling everyone about the miracle that just happened to us. One day my brother came running up very excited and told us that he had just won the leader of the Cholos (our old rival gang) to the Lord and that He had prayed with Mark right in front of his whole gang. Our Bible club was kicked out of room after room on campus but God always provided and that club met every day for the next 3 years. Teens were being saved, lives were being changed, we were discipling our flock and they were devouring the Word and witnessing and winning souls too. One day we got the idea to stand up in the hallway between classes as everyone was at their lockers and preach a 5 minute gospel sermon. That got us hauled into the office. We would bring gospel tracks to school and pass them out. One day we were hauled into the office and as we were sitting outside the principals office waiting to be seen we gave out our last tract to a teen waiting there as well. When we were called in they asked us if we were handing out tracts and we said yes. They asked to see one and we truthfully told them we didn’t have any more 🙂

Our school had atrium hallways where the lockers were that were open to the sky. We got the idea to come in at night over the roof and drop down into the hallways and put a gospel tract through the vent in the door in every locker in the school. Remember in my previous post I said stark raving mad passion…? Yeah. We sent off to different tract societies and had them send us the 4,000 tracts that it would require then one night we dressed all in black and delivered our package. The next morning it was pandemonium as 4,000 students walked through the halls reading a gospel tract and then, something we hadn’t anticipated, promptly threw them on the floor. We were hauled into the office for that one! Many young people came to Christ through those tracts and we were walking on clouds. We pulled our cat burglar stunt with the tracts several more nights over the next three years. One of the neatest evangelistic ideas we had that year was to get everyone in our Bible club a white T-shirt with big red letters on the front that read “DO YOU KNOW?” We would strategically wear them all on the same day and when anyone asked us, “do you know what?” we would say, “do you know if you died today if you would go to heaven or hell?” Many, many young people came to Christ as a result of those simple T-shirts. In just a couple of months the news of our Bible club began to spread all over the city, state, and eventually the country and we began to get invitations to tell our story at churches and youth rallies. But that is for another post.

There is no way to tell all of the miracles that happened everyday for those 3 years of Bible club. Many of those teens are walking with the Lord and in ministry around the country today. To God be the glory! But that was just the beginning… Aflame For God 4 – 17-Year-Old Evangelist

“The Gospel is not an old, old story, freshly told. It is a fire in the Spirit, fed by the flame of Immortal Love; and woe unto us, if, through our negligence to stir up the Gift of God which is within us, that fire burns low.” ― Leonard Ravenhill

Read the beginning of the series HERE

My brother and I left that camp in the summer of 1982 “On Fire For God.” We went home talking about how the world was going to hell and God had Personally called us to do something about it. Well, frankly, we scared our parents, friends, neighbors, pastor, and youth pastor half to death… in the best possible sense. A tremendous spiritual battle had been raging at home with our parents the whole time we were at camp (imagine that) and we were hit with it the minute we walked in the door but the Holy Spirit was so near and at night when I would steal away into my room and stretch out on the floor before Him, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit would come again in such sweet fellowship and power and with such a clarity of vision and passion that I couldn’t doubt that I was on the right path. The one overwhelming message to me at that time was “this life is a wisp of vapor, a puff of smoke, a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes into thin air… live for eternity!”

We started spending hours in prayer and in the word reading and memorizing. We talked to anyone who would listen about Jesus. It was a heavenly feeling to know your cause for which you were born and to be about that cause for the glory of God and for the thrill of being in the Lord’s army. I knew I had scared my mother when I came out of my room with a big box of all my worldly music and clothes (which I had purchased with my own money) and explained that these weren’t glorifying to God and so I was throwing them away.

I also asked her to take me to the Christian book store so I could get a “real” Bible. She did and I bought a leather bound King James Schofield Reference Bible. I was so excited I nearly burst. The first thing I did when I got home was to take a red pen and underline every verse in the New Testament about salvation and began to memorize them so that I could lead people to Christ. The word came alive to me and I saw so many wonderful things there. In a relatively short period of time I had read through the entire Bible. I remember sitting on the couch at my grandparents house on a Sunday afternoon underlining verses in red. Every once in a while I would exuberantly shout out, “Oh wow! Listen to this verse I found” and I would read it out loud to them. My grandfather would just look at me as if I had lost my mind. The other thing that changed that really shook some people up was that in our rather large church all of the teens sat in the back right corner of the sanctuary and mostly goofed off and passed notes during the service on Sundays but on my first Sunday back at church after camp I sat up on the front row with my new Bible and a notebook and feverishly took notes of the pastor’s sermon. Two weeks before I had been on the back row flirting with the girls and joking with the guys. How my heart and affections had altered. For the first time in my life I had been introduced to something… someOne Who was worth my full attention and devotion, Who was worth my whole life.

The summer was rapidly coming to a close and I began to anticipate going back to school and putting my Capture America plan into motion. The Holy Spirit was so heavy on me. Even though we were already beginning to experience some persecution from our family and friends, I could feel the Hound of Heaven pursuing me and pulling me into His kingdom work. I knew that there were about 4,000 students in my high school and in my first two years there I hadn’t ran into one who really knew the Lord. This was going to be my first mission field. God and Mark and I were going to turn this school upside down for God! The week before school started I called all of my bullriding buddies and told them that I had met the Lord and that I was a new man and we weren’t going to be having any more gang fights with the Cholos (a local hispanic gang), no more drinking parties, and no more skipping school (the semester before I met the Lord, I had skipped 2/3 of my classes to go get into fights and steal and drink). I told them that I was starting a Bible Study at lunch every day in the library and I wanted them to come. After long periods of silence, and a few questions like, “are you messing with me man?” some agreed to come. Mark and I were prayed up, fasted up, studied up and ready for school to start. In my next post I will begin to tell the story of the Manzano High School Bible Club. Aflame For God 3 – Cat Burglars For Jesus

“I have come to set the world on fire.” – Jesus (Luke 12:49)

I grew up in a rough neighborhood. Nearly everyday in 5th and 6th grade I had to take a different route walking home from elementary school because invariably some gang members would be waiting to beat me up. I hated elementary school those years but it paled in comparison to how rough middle school was and in 7th and 8th grade the violence intensified. I was in or fleeing a fight nearly every day. One day in 7th grade it climaxed for me. A high school young man waylaid me with with a chain when I had my arms full of books. I ended up with two black eyes, broken nose, broken teeth, cuts and chain link shaped bruises all over my face and torso. But the damage to the outside wasn’t the real tragedy. It was the damage to my soul. A murderous hate began to well up within my that day. I began to study martial arts, carry weapons, and over the next three years became the one picking fights. I never got beat up again. Eventually I became the leader of a gang in my high school called Stomps. One day in 10th grade a member of another gang, Leroy, picked a fight with my little brother (a year and a half younger than me) and I told him, “Meet me in the Safeway grocery store parking lot at 2:00pm and we will settle this!” Then I cavalierly shouted, “and bring some friends so I don’t get lonely!” My gang of 10 Stomps and I came around the back of the Safeway at 2:00pm armed with clubs, chains, and brass knuckles and got the surprise of our lives. In the parking lot stood 40 rival gang members holding machetes, knives, and pistols! We froze in our tracks. Fortunately they were looking for us to come around the other side of the building and so hadn’t seen us. We quickly ducked back behind the Safeway, agreed that we had to run to live, and took off for a large, nearby apartment complex where we could split up and loose any followers. Sure enough we were seen and hot pursuit followed but just as we hit the apartment complex 3 police cars pulled up and started arresting the rival gang members and we were able to slip away unseen. Leroy and his cousin Rodney became my arch enemies and many conflicts began.

My mother got scared. She told me, “You will end up in prison or in the grave.” In the summer of 1982 she went to my dad and told him that there was a Christian summer camp coming up in July and she felt like my brother and I really needed go there. She later said that she felt like it was a last-ditch effort to save her boys before the world completely assimilated us.

So we packed up and went to Singing Hills Youth Camp in the mountains of New Mexico for the week of July 19 – 23, 1982. I figured that I would play some sports, meet some pretty girls, and all would be well. In my wildest dreams I didn’t foresee the cataclysmic shift that was about to take place in my life.

God’s secret weapon, that I didn’t count on, who was speaking that week was a fiery 22-year-old evangelist by the name of Jerry Johnston (now pastoring in Kansas City, KS). Jerry had been preaching since his radical conversion at the age of 14. He enjoyed an anointing of the Holy Spirit unlike anything I had ever encountered in my life up to that point. He preached, and I mean PREACHED, every morning and every evening of that week. He made living for Jesus seem so awesome and the power of God so real that a hunger and thirst for God began to grown in me. I wanted to know God like Jerry did. I ached to have the power that Jerry had with God. The Holy Spirit’s conviction was so strong on me as he preached… I resisted Monday morning, Monday night, Tuesday morning, Tuesday night, Wednesday morning, BUT GOD!! on Wednesday night, July 21, 1982 oh what a night. As Jerry preached the room seemed to sparkle with electricity. It was as if heaven came down and touched me and the dam broke in my heart and a torrent of God’s glorious grace raged down over me. I felt that if I didn’t get out of my seat and go to the front when the invitation was given, I was going to explode right in the pew. I bolted to the front to join the dozens of other teens coming to kneel there and I prayed a very simple prayer that I meant with all of my heart, “Lord, if you want me, if you want my life, I’m Yours.”

I can’t explain the peace, power, joy, and stark raving mad passion that came over me at that moment but deep inside I knew that He had pursued me, He had called me, I was special to Him, and He wanted to use me for something great. The only way I could explain it was just to say that He had “set me on fire” for Him! As I was still kneeling there, I felt a hand on my shoulder and I turned to see my brother, Mark (now pastoring in Missouri), with tears streaming down his face and he said, “I gave it all tonight brother.” I remember it as if it happened 5 minutes ago. I was later to realize that God had put that stark raving mad passion in my brother too. The Bullen family would never be the same again. I went to my youth pastor, Rick Cochran (now pastoring in Indianapolis, IN), the next morning and said, “Brother Rick, you are not going to believe me, but I think God is calling me to preach and I don’t mean someday, but now. I’m burning up inside but I’m just a 16-year-old kid. I wouldn’t even know where to start. Please tell me if this is my imagination. Tell me how to know if it is from God.” Rick wisely opened his Bible to 1 Corinthians 1 and read starting with verse 20:

 
[quote]20 Where is the wise man? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? 21 For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not come to know God, God was well-pleased through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe. 22 For indeed Jews ask for signs and Greeks search for wisdom; 23 but we preach Christ crucified, to Jews a stumbling block and to Gentiles foolishness, 24 but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. 25 Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men. 26 For consider your calling, brethren, that there were not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble; 27 but God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things which are strong, 28 and the base things of the world and the despised God has chosen, the things that are not, so that He may nullify the things that are, 29 so that no man may boast before God. 30 But by His doing you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification, and redemption, 31 so that, just as it is written, “LET HIM WHO BOASTS, BOAST IN THE LORD.”[/quote]
 

I was so happy! God has chosen the foolish, the weak, WHOO HOO!! I qualify! Rick prayed with me right there at my bunk and I accepted the mantle that God had placed on me. I was going to be a preacher!

The rest of the camp I soaked up every word that Jerry Johnston had to say. Two things he said that exploded in my heart were, first, he told the story of D.L. Moody, the great 19th century evangelist who shook two continents for Christ, and how as a young believer Moody had heard a man, a Mr. Varney, say, “The world has yet to see what God will do with one man who is wholly committed to Him.” and how Moody had walked out of that meeting saying, “Oh God let me be that man.” Oh! How my young heart burned when I heard those words! I too wanted to test God in this and see what He would do with little old Matt Bullen. Second, Jerry said to us, “most young people go to summer camp and they cry and they make all kinds of commitments to God but then they go back home and nothing changes…” Then he shouted, “I’m praying that one of you (and I could have sworn that he looked right at me) goes home and turns his family, his high-school, and his city upside down for God!” Oh! I wanted to jump up and run out to the highway that snaked its way past the camp and through the mountains down to my home-town of Albuquerque, New Mexico and start hitchhiking home so that I could get started turning my world upside down for God.

I felt the power of God’s Spirit on me so strong that I thought I was floating. I felt light and tingled all over and my heart was bursting with joy. It was the most wonderful experience to know that God had placed me there to hear those words, that He was real, and powerful, and He wanted me on His team. I learned that Jerry Johnston’s ministry theme was Capture America for Christ and that at the young age of 22 (only 6 years older than me at the time) he already had a nationwide ministry that was reaching thousands for Christ. Capture America… what a vision! I started to formulate a plan in my heart of how I was going to help him do it… but more on that in Aflame for God 2 – A Puff of Smoke.

Some more fellow soldiers that I would like to tell you about today are Clay and Ashley Vaughn, missionaries to Haiti. Ashley and her family, the Boriacks, are dear friends of ours and I had the privilege of pastoring them for awhile. They are a delightful representation of a godly family. Tom and Tammy, Ashley’s parents, have encouraged and supported our family and our ministry in Colombia greatly. The Boriacks also supported and helped us bless our friends the Villalobos at Monte De Gracia with the initial funds to build their school for orphans years ago. When Ashley was a young teenager I remember her passion for missions and her passion for books. I had heard stories about Ashley meeting Clay at Frontier Camp in Crockett, Texas and how he proposed to her in the back of a truck under a tarp in the pouring rain with 20 other missionaries huddled around them but I didn’t get to meet him until their wedding and I was very impressed with this young man and very happy for Ashley and her family. Clay and Ashley and the Boriacks supported our Share the Hope dinner in December for the safe house in Bogota and I got to see a little more of Clay’s heart. He and Ashley have several things going on that I believe God will greatly expand in the years to come and I am blessed and honored to call them friends and fellow soldiers. See what all they are doing at these sites and please consider supporting them:

Another P from the ministry of Jesus that intrigues and convicts me and brings tears to my eyes is Personal touch. If we are to be His hands in our world we must imitate this.

Matt. 8:3 Jesus stretched out His hand and touched him,

Matt. 8:15 He touched her hand,

Matt. 9:25 He entered and took her by the hand, and the girl got up.

Matt. 9:29 Then He touched their eyes,

Matt. 14:31 Immediately Jesus stretched out His hand and took hold of him,

Matt. 17:7 And Jesus came to them and touched them and said, “Get up, and do not be afraid.”

Matt. 19:13 Then some children were brought to Him so that He might lay His hands on them and pray; and the disciples rebuked them.

Matt. 19:15 After laying His hands on them, He departed from there.

Matt. 20:34 Moved with compassion, Jesus touched their eyes;

Mark 1:41 Moved with compassion, Jesus stretched out His hand and touched him,

Mark 7:33 Jesus took him aside from the crowd, by himself, and put His fingers into his ears, and after spitting, He touched his tongue with the saliva;

Mark 8:22 And they *came to Bethsaida. And they *brought a blind man to Jesus and *implored Him to touch him.

Mark 10:13 And they were bringing children to Him so that He might touch them; but the disciples rebuked them.

Luke 5:13 And He stretched out His hand and touched him,

Luke 7:14 And He came up and touched the coffin; and the bearers came to a halt. And He said, “Young man, I say to you, arise!”

Luke 13:13 And He laid His hands on her; and immediately she was made erect again and began glorifying God.

Luke 18:15 And they were bringing even their babies to Him so that He would touch them, but when the disciples saw it, they began rebuking them.

Luke 22:51 But Jesus answered and said, “Stop! No more of this.” And He touched his ear and healed him.

Jesus not only touches people with compassion and tenderness, He allows others to touch Him with the same healing result.

Matt. 9:20 And a woman who had been suffering from a hemorrhage for twelve years, came up behind Him and touched the fringe of His cloak; 21 for she was saying to herself, “If I only touch His garment, I will get well.”

Matt. 14:36 and they implored Him that they might just touch the fringe of His cloak; and as many as touched it were cured.

Mark 3:10 for He had healed many, with the result that all those who had afflictions pressed around Him in order to touch Him.

Mark 6:56 Wherever He entered villages, or cities, or countryside, they were laying the sick in the market places, and imploring Him that they might just touch the fringe of His cloak; and as many as touched it were being cured.

Luke 6:19 And all the people were trying to touch Him, for power was coming from Him and healing them all.

Luke 7:39 Now when the Pharisee who had invited Him saw this, he said to himself, “If this man were a prophet He would know who and what sort of person this woman is who is touching Him, that she is a sinner.”

Luke 24:39 “See My hands and My feet, that it is I Myself; touch Me and see, for a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.”

Touch is a wonderful part of love and compassion. Mother Teresa exemplified this. Paul E. Miller in his book Love Walked Among Us has this to say of her,

“The image of her holding a destitute and dying person — not repelled by the squalor of feces, vomit, sputum, and blood — elicited love and admiration from the whole world. Mother Teresa said, ‘We train ourselves to be extremely kind and gentle in touch of hand, tone of voice, and in our smile, so as to make the mercy of God very real.’ She consciously imitated Jesus’ touch.”

If we are to do what Jesus would do, we are going to have to get used to touching people and being touched by them. Paul Miller goes on to say,

“When Jesus touched people, he gently intruded into their lives. Whatever He touched became clean and whole. He touched the blind, the deaf, and the lame when He healed them. He moved toward people that others pulled away from. He couldn’t seem to keep His hands off lepers.”

I have always thought that a pastor should have a shepherd’s gentleness of touch and be quick with a hearty hug or arm around the shoulder. Churches that I have pastored have been known for their love and familial relationships. We have also been marked by robust hugging. Imagine how elated I was to run across this quote from one of my heroes, pastor John Piper. It sums up beautifully what I feel about the pastoral hug.

“I think there are many people in the world who probably haven’t been hugged for ten years. I had a woman in her fifties say to me one time—she had been a widow for probably about ten years—and she said to me, ‘I haven’t been hugged for a long time.’ And it was just so revelatory for me for a moment that there are people who actually go through life—and they are good people! They’re not eager to jump into bed as a prostitute or to fool around on the weekend. They know they’re going to be pure—but they’re not ever touched. Nobody ever touches them.

And so I thought, “Boy. God, make me a good hugger. Make me a good, clean, pure, trusted, pastoral hugger.”

I just love that. I can’t count the times in my ministry that someone, man or woman, has wet the front of my shirt with their tears because I was available with a hug. There is an anointing of the Holy Spirit and when it is upon you, your touch can be healing. Sometimes physically but many more times spiritually and emotionally.

We must keep ourselves pure. We must keep our hands, hearts, and minds pure so that when Jesus wants to hug someone He can use us to do it for Him. Paul Miller reminds us,

“Of course, some people touch inappropriately. When talking about the danger of sexual lust, Jesus exaggerates for the sake of emphasis, ‘If your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off’ (Matthew 5:30). Our hands are meant to gently touch with love. How can you even think of using your hands to touch people as objects?”

If we are to do what Jesus would do, we must reach out our hands and touch people in love.

In my work among the orphans of Colombia, one of the things that I never cease to be amazed by is their hunger and thirst for adult affection. Without a mommy and daddy to meet this deepest of human needs, they become famished for love and attention. Often our team members will have five or six children hanging on them, holding their hands, asking for a kiss on the cheek, and touching their face. Yes, we tell them about Jesus over and over again but it is an unspeakable blessing to be able to imitate Him and hold them and touch them and bless them. The first time I was there I came away with a whole new appreciation for the sweet God-Man of Mark 10:13-16

Mark 10:13 And they were bringing children to Him so that He might touch them; but the disciples rebuked them. 14 But when Jesus saw this, He was indignant and said to them, “Permit the children to come to Me; do not hinder them; for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. 15 “Truly I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child will not enter it at all.” 16 And He took them in His arms and began blessing them, laying His hands on them.

Lord, help us to “see”, “feel”, “do”, and “touch” and “be touched” like Jesus!

In part 3 of our look at a P from Jesus’ ministry, Passion, we see that Jesus’ seeing and feeling led to action. He didn’t just see and feel compassion and then do nothing about what He saw and felt. Jesus saw, felt, and then acted. If you look at every one of the scriptures that we have cited in the last two posts about how Jesus saw and then how He felt, you will find that the next phrase tells you what He DID about it. There is a very concise statement in the book of Acts that gives us, I think, great insight into the life of Jesus and consequently into how our lives should be.

Acts 10:38 “You know of Jesus of Nazareth, how God anointed Him with the Holy Spirit and with power, and how He went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with Him.

These phrases “doing good” and “good works” are general descriptions of the work that we are to be about as Christians. The scriptures use these frequently. Let’s look at some of the passages.

Psa. 34:14 Depart from evil and do good;

Psa. 37:3 Trust in the LORD and do good;

Psa. 37:27 Depart from evil and do good,

Psa. 119:68 You are good and do good; Teach me…

Psa. 125:4 Do good, O LORD, to those who are good

Eccl. 3:12 I know that there is nothing better for them than to rejoice and to do good in one’s lifetime;

Isaiah gives us a little idea of exactly what this phrase “do good” means:

Is. 1:17 Learn to do good;

Seek justice,

Reprove the ruthless,

Defend the orphan,

Plead for the widow.

Jesus rebukes the Pharisees because they were more interested in their rules than they were in seeing a man healed on the Sabbath,

Matt. 12:12 “How much more valuable then is a man than a sheep! So then, it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath.”

Paul encourages us to “do good” and to keep “doing good.”

Rom. 2:7 to those who by perseverance in doing good seek for glory and honor and immortality, eternal life;

Rom. 2:10 but glory and honor and peace to everyone who does good, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.

Gal. 6:9 Let us not lose heart in doing good, for in due time we will reap if we do not grow weary. 10 So then, while we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, and especially to those who are of the household of the faith.

2Th. 3:13 But as for you, brethren, do not grow weary of doing good.

1Tim. 6:18 Instruct them to do good, to be rich in good works, to be generous and ready to share,

Heb. 13:16 And do not neglect doing good and sharing, for with such sacrifices God is pleased.

Eph. 2:10 For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.

Col. 1:10 so that you will walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, to please Him in all respects, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God;

2Th. 2:17 comfort and strengthen your hearts in every good work and word.

1Tim. 2:10 but rather by means of good works, as is proper for women making a claim to godliness.

1Tim. 5:10 having a reputation for good works; and if she has brought up children, if she has shown hospitality to strangers, if she has washed the saints’ feet, if she has assisted those in distress, and if she has devoted herself to every good work.

2Tim. 2:21 Therefore, if anyone cleanses himself from these things, he will be a vessel for honor, sanctified, useful to the Master, prepared for every good work.

2Tim. 3:17 so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work.

And finally John sums it up for us,

3 John 11 Beloved, do not imitate what is evil, but what is good. The one who does good is of God; the one who does evil has not seen God.

The evidence of the genuineness of our conversion is not merely our subscription to a set of beliefs or our having responsively quoted a certain “sinner’s prayer” on a certain date in history. No! The evidence of the genuineness of our conversion lies in our actions. At the great white throne judgement all men will be judged by their works.

Rev. 20:11 Then I saw a great white throne and Him who sat upon it, from whose presence earth and heaven fled away, and no place was found for them. 12 And I saw the dead, the great and the small, standing before the throne, and books were opened; and another book was opened, which is the book of life; and the dead were judged from the things which were written in the books, according to their deeds. 13 And the sea gave up the dead which were in it, and death and Hades gave up the dead which were in them; and they were judged, every one of them according to their deeds.

What is it that Jesus says to the righteous and the unrighteous in Matthew 25?

Matt. 25:31 “But when the Son of Man comes in His glory, and all the angels with Him, then He will sit on His glorious throne. 32 “All the nations will be gathered before Him; and He will separate them from one another, as the shepherd separates the sheep from the goats; 33 and He will put the sheep on His right, and the goats on the left.

Matt. 25:34 “Then the King will say to those on His right, ‘Come, you who are blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. 35 ‘For I was hungry, and you gave Me something to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave Me something to drink; I was a stranger, and you invited Me in; 36 naked, and you clothed Me; I was sick, and you visited Me; I was in prison, and you came to Me.’ 37 “Then the righteous will answer Him, ‘Lord, when did we see You hungry, and feed You, or thirsty, and give You something to drink? 38 ‘And when did we see You a stranger, and invite You in, or naked, and clothe You? 39 ‘When did we see You sick, or in prison, and come to You?’ 40 “The King will answer and say to them, ‘Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did it to one of these brothers of Mine, even the least of them, you did it to Me.’

Matt. 25:41 “Then He will also say to those on His left, ‘Depart from Me, accursed ones, into the eternal fire which has been prepared for the devil and his angels; 42 for I was hungry, and you gave Me nothing to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave Me nothing to drink; 43 I was a stranger, and you did not invite Me in; naked, and you did not clothe Me; sick, and in prison, and you did not visit Me.’ 44 “Then they themselves also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see You hungry, or thirsty, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not take care of You?’ 45 “Then He will answer them, ‘Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to Me.’ 46 “These will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”

If we are truly Christians and the Spirit of Jesus Christ dwells in us, then our lives will be characterized by “doing” “good works.”

John 5:19 Therefore Jesus answered and was saying to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of Himself, unless it is something He sees the Father doing; for whatever the Father does, these things the Son also does in like manner. 20 “For the Father loves the Son, and shows Him all things that He Himself is doing; and the Father will show Him greater works than these, so that you will marvel.

John 14:12 “Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes in Me, the works that I do, he will do also; and greater works than these he will do; because I go to the Father.

Lord, help us to “see”, “feel”, and “act” like Jesus!

The Shoults are friends we met at a church we helped plant in Magnolia, Texas years ago. They are now missionaries in Mexico. They were in Houston today on their way back to Mexico and I was blessed to get to spend an hour with them.

First, I would like to share an email that I received from Phillip Shoults last year explaining what God was doing for and through them and then I will tell about our conversation today.

Last March I received this email from Phillip.

Brother Matt,

It was good to see you on Facebook. I am not much on social networking but have enjoyed finding and catching up with old friends and believers we have known from our many travels. I will provide you with a brief note of encouragement and say a small thank you for the impact you and your wife have had on Ashley and me over the years. It all started when we were first exploring home schooling and we enrolled Forest & Madeline in the program (PACES) Ted and Johnnie Seago started to help parents, just like us, navigate the early stages of this journey. We learned to endure the challenges and focus on the long term goals and intentions of instilling character first, values then academics. We learned to stand on our own Biblically-based convictions in the face of family scrutiny over our choices to home school and build a stronger family with our central focus on Christ our Savior and Redeemer and living an abundant life in Him. We will enjoy the first fruit of our labor with Forest graduating this May! Praise God.

Coming into to the community of believers at “Grace” in 2003 had a tremendous impact on me. I needed more role models and examples of how I could do a better job supporting our vision for strengthening the family and serving God….. I found it in the wonderful families and Godly men of grace. It was tough leaving TX for Nashville in 2005 and I saw God provide for the move, although I believe that many of my motives were not entirely honorable to Him (namely pursuing money and position/promotion). Ashley and I never forgot the impact of the “model” we experienced at Grace and when we first moved to the Nashville area, we prayed and prayed over finding a community of believers similar to the ones of Grace. Within about 6 months, we were fellowshipping with about 18-20 other believers, meeting from house to house and I was thankful for the experiences we had found back in Conroe.

God really started to work on my heart and in 2007 as I felt him challenge me with a stinging question “….. what is the most important thing in your life? And if it is not me, would you give it up?” It took me 6 months to verbally give him my answer, but I did. I knew that I had made money and my job a higher priority than my spiritual growth, my wife, my kids, etc, etc so I told God he could have everything and told Ashley that we should “get ready for change.” I left LP in October of 2008. That move did not make much sense to a number of people, considering that the economy was tanking and times were getting tough. I kept thinking in my mind, “… what does it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his soul, or his children’s soul, or his family… or anything of eternal value for that matter.” God has been so good as I started a small consulting practice, working out of my home, eliminating a 65 mile round trip commute and about 40K of travel miles each year. Wow, breakfast with the family each morning, Bible Study and devotions each morning at 5:00 a.m, time to invest in my wife and children through family devotions and one-on-one discipleship with my kids have all been a real blessing. God has provided and blessed in so many ways and I thank Him daily for it.

Ashley and I are now earnestly praying over an opportunity we are pursuing/considering to move to Mexico and join our dear friends, David and Maria Skinner in helping expand the Gospel of Jesus Christ through from their hub in Oaxtepec, Morelos MX. The last “link” here in TN is to sell our home and make a short transition back to TX, prep then move. We are praying for clarity and confirmation around this decision.

I wanted to say thank you for your obedience to the calling God has placed on your life, to demonstrate to other men (and families) how to embrace the Christian Life and enjoy the fulfillment of serving our Lord and Savior and not ourselves (or man) in everything we do. You, Ted, Dan, Voddie and so many other men were a great example to me of how to accept and joyfully fulfill the calling God has placed on every man who has surrendered His Life to Christ and accepted the responsibility of being the Priest, Prophet, Provider, & Protector of his home. I just wanted to return thanks to you, I already thank my heavenly Father each day! Your wife gave Ashley a book years ago, Created to be His Help Meet and she has been so grateful for that experience. She has done that study in our home for other ladies at least once, bought a case of books and given them as gifts to every sister-in-law, friend and young lady about to be married. Some seed fell on fertile ground, other seed perished. I have been a direct beneficiary of her being impacted by that book and more importantly the Truth in God’s word. Please pass on to your wife that encouragement and testimony from Ashley.

Thanks brother Matt, In Christ…. his humble servant.

Now, speed forward to today. Phillip and Ashley and their children have been in Mexico for 6 months loving and serving the indigenous migrant sugar cane harvesters and their families. They are also preparing a place for short term mission trips to come down. It was exciting to hear about the many creative ways that they are teaching the gospel to these uneducated peoples. The whole family is involved and it thrilled my soul to see how excited the young people of this family are about what God has called their family to. I hope that in the near future we can go down and help them in some way.

For more information on their ministry go to http://www.globalforce-mx.com/Page/Home/1

I recently shared about our fellow soldier, Hannah, who is serving in Uganda. I would also like to share about another fellow soldier, Miriam, who has a wonderful ministry to orphans in Matamoros, Mexico. I was privileged to meet Miriam and her family several years ago and they have been a blessing to me ever since. We have helped them with a few projects and I hope very much that in the future we can help them more. We are so blessed to be able to know and share with such wonderful saints of God. Their ministry is called Monte De Gracia (Mountain Of Grace). Here is an update that I received from Miriam today. Enjoy.

Passion For People Continues With Feeling

In my last post we looked at how Jesus passion began with seeing. The next thing we see in the life of Jesus is that His “seeing” resulted in feeling. He didn’t just see and then remain unmoved and untouched by what He saw. Here are a few places where the scriptures give us insight into the heart of Jesus.

Matt 8:9 He marveled

Matt 9:36 He felt compassion for them

Matt 15:32 “I feel compassion for the people

Matt. 20:34 Moved with compassion, Jesus

Matt 26:38 “My soul is deeply grieved, to the point of death

Mark 1:41 Moved with compassion, Jesus

Mark 3:5 After looking around at them with anger,

Mark 3:5 grieved at their hardness of heart,

Mark 6:34 He saw a large crowd, and He felt compassion

Mark 8:12 Sighing deeply in His spirit

Mark 10:13 He was indignant and said to them

Mark 10:21 Looking at him, Jesus felt a love for him

Luke 7:8 He marveled at him,

Luke 10:21 He rejoiced greatly

Luke 22:44 And being in agony

Luke 22:44 He was praying very fervently;

John 11:33 He was deeply moved in spirit and was troubled,

John 11:35 Jesus wept

John 11:38 So Jesus, again being deeply moved within,

John 13:21 He became troubled in spirit

The Lord Jesus Christ was the opposite of apathetic! He not only saw, He felt strongly about the needs of the people around Him. This was not a man who was afraid of passion in His ministry! His fervor was so great that those around Him noticed it enough to comment on it when they wrote their gospel accounts long after the events had actually taken place.

Yet in religious films today, Jesus is nearly always depicted only as meek and quiet and He seems to be moving in slow motion. One person has pointed out that if you look closely, Jesus never blinks, He never cries, He never gets angry, He never smiles in these movies. The cinema version of Jesus is not the Bible version.

Jesus was a man who felt deeply and expressed His feelings openly. If Jesus was walking the earth today many churches and Christians would consider Him fanatical, unstable, crazy, or worse, just as they did in His own day.

Mark 3:21-22 When His own people heard of this, they went out to take custody of Him; for they were saying, “He has lost His senses.” the scribes who came down from Jerusalem were saying, “He is possessed by Beelzebul,” and “He casts out the demons by the ruler of the demons.”

I believe that we should be worried about the authenticity of our conversion if we can preach about, sing about, and believe in things such as heaven and hell, sin and death, poverty and disease, Satan and evil without becoming passionate about it. If we can look around at the suffering in our world and not be torn up about it, if we can read about human trafficking and not weep, if we can see pictures of hungry orphans around the world and not be moved to give and/or go, does the Jesus of the Bible really live inside of us? Because when He saw, He was “moved with compassion.”

An 18 year old girl who my family is ministering to recently sent me this message that touches perfectly upon this subject with a boldness that is refreshing…

“We call ourselves Christians…We profess to know Christ…What then is wrong in churches today? What causes such turmoil…such overthrow of harmony…such strife and malice…? What is it that is the deciding factor of the prosperity of the Church today as we know it? It is simply this: If we want to allow pharisees to lurk in the dark corners of the church and sulk in the shadowed pews…we should quit calling ourselves “Christians”…it is at this miserable point that we should give up…we cannot allow apathy to poison our churches…for by simple inaction on our part, we petition satan to come sit on our doorstep…we plead with him to make himself at home in our god-forsaken churches…we unashamedly invite him to join in our “worship”…by our apathy…we call down the wrath of God…”For you were neither hot, nor cold, but lukewarm…therefore I shall spew you out of my mouth, saith the Lord”…Look around you friends…are you beckoning the Lord’s anger? Can you in good faith call yourself a “Christian”? Do you have a zeal for God that consumes you…this is where I want to be…I want to be so consumed with Christ that it would appear that our candles are melting into one…our hearts kindled together into one flame…This is the vision…who will pursue it?”

Lord, help us to feel like Jesus!

On the second day of our recent trip to Colombia I shared another “P” from the ministry of Jesus, Passion, and I would like to expand on that topic further in the next few posts.

Jesus’ Passion is People and begins with Seeing…

Another of the “P’s” from the ministry of Jesus that the team and I explored on our recent trip to Colombia was Pleasure. If we want to have a ministry like Jesus ministry then we must have His pleasure. Our motivation for ministry must be our joy, delight, and pleasure in God. Duty will never suffice as a suitable motivation for missions…

Enjoyment empowers effort. Doing is the fruit of delighting. Performance is energized by pleasure. – Sam Storms

I want to elaborate on that thought some more. God was motivated by joy, delight, and pleasure, first in Himself, and then in us…

God’s complete joy in Himself as a Trinity led Him to want to double that joy by extending it beyond Himself to the human beings He created. Likewise, we will want to double our joy by seeing how adequate God is to meet our need – love as we use our resources to perform the greatest service to others – helping them to experience the joy in believing in God’s wonderful promises, guaranteed by the finished work of Christ. – Daniel Fuller

The Father’s pleasure is His people…

Psalm 149:4 For the LORD takes PLEASURE in His people;

He will beautify the afflicted ones with salvation.

Therefore He found great pleasure in His plan to draw us back to Him by the sacrifice of His beloved Son…

Isaiah 53:10 But the LORD was PLEASED to crush Him, putting Him to grief; if He would render Himself as a guilt offering, He will see His offspring, He will prolong His days, and the good PLEASURE of the LORD will prosper in His hand.

The Bible says in Hebrews 12:2 that we are to look to Jesus as our example and then it goes on to say that Jesus’ motivation for enduring the cross and despising the shame was the JOY that was set before Him.

fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the JOY set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.

That joy was redeeming us back to Himself! So the Father’s pleasure and the Son’s pleasure is the redeeming of lost sinners. And He wants us to share in His pleasure by first knowing and loving Him,

Psalm 16:11 You will make known to me the path of life; In Your presence is fullness of JOY; In Your right hand there are PLEASURES forever

Psalm 36:8 They drink their fill of the abundance of Your house; And You give them to drink of the river of Your DELIGHTS.

John 15:11 “These things I have spoken to you so that My JOY may be in you, and that your JOY may be made full.

John 16:24 …so that your JOY may be made full.

John 17:13 “these things I speak in the world so that they may have My JOY made full in themselves.

I bear my testimony that there is no joy to be found in all this world like that of sweet communion with Christ. – C.H. Spurgeon

The most precious truth in the Bible is that God’s greatest interest is to glorify the wealth of His grace by making sinners happy in Him. – John Piper

and second by sharing Him with others. When we are full of Him, His love and joy will naturally spill out on others. I think Joni Eareckson Tada says it so well…

“God happily shares His gladness, His joy comes flooding over heaven’s walls filling my heart in a waterfall of delight, which then in turn always streams out to others in a flood of encouragement, and then erupts back to God in an ecstatic fountain of praise. He gets your heart pumping for heaven. He injects His peace, power, and perspective into your spiritual being. He puts a song in your heart. I want to know God like this! Shove me under the waterfall of the Trinity’s joy, which splashes and spills over heaven’s walls. If He’s always in a good mood, I want to catch it”

But how do we stay under this waterfall? John Piper says it like this…

“Grace is power from God to do good things in us and for us. It is an ever cascading, infinitesimal waterfall. How then do you serve God? You posture yourself, and you maneuver your life, and you devote energy and effort and time and creativity to positioning yourself under the waterfall of God’s continual blessing, so that he remains the source and you remain the empty receiver. You remain the beneficiary, he remains the benefactor; you remain hungry, he remains the bread; you remain thirsty, he remains the water. You find out where the waterfall of grace is falling and you get under it. When it moves, you follow it so that you stay wet. And usually it takes you overseas…”

Our joy in God is magnified and doubled when we share it with others in missions and evangelism…

For all of us it should be unthinkable to keep to ourselves the knowledge that God’s ultimate delight is to do the greatest good for others by letting them share in the supreme joy He has in Himself. How could any of us enjoy heaven unless we mobilized our time, talents and treasure to do our utmost to get the good news to the rest of the world? – Daniel Fuller

Missions is the automatic outflow and overflow of love for Christ. We delight to enlarge our joy in Him by extending it to others. As Lottie Moon said, “Surely there can be no greater joy than that of saving souls.” – John Piper

Missions is the overflow of our delight in God because missions is the overflow of God’s delight in being God. – John Piper

Most men are not satisfied with the permanent output of their lives. Nothing can wholly satisfy the life of Christ within His followers except the adoption of Christ’s purpose toward the world He came to redeem. Fame, pleasure and riches are but husks and ashes in contrast with the boundless and abiding joy of working with God for the fulfillment of His eternal plans. The men who are putting everything into Christ’s undertaking are getting out of life its sweetest and most priceless rewards. – J. Campbell White, The Laymen’s Missionary Movement, 1909.

I believe that I have experienced in 28 years of ministry a little taste of joy in God both by knowing Him and by sharing Him with others. I have stood in the pulpit and felt His mantle on my shoulders. I have seen Him do incredible things and I have enjoyed seeing His fingerprints all over my ministry. I have walked through the orphanages and felt His presence so thick I thought I could reach out and touch Him. I have seen Him in a thousand faces. But I want more… so much more…