Aflame for God 9 – A Man Obsessed

“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