When Ministry Gets Messy

In
1979, I lived in Weaverville, a mountain town of about 3,000 people in
the Trinity Alps of Northern California. My wife, Kathy, and I had moved
there and bought a Union 76 service station in town. 

One winter day it was snowing like
crazy, and our city was about 3 feet deep in snow. The wind was howling,
and the snow was falling horizontally. It was so cold that I had closed
the bay doors and was running the heater full blast. My crew was
working on cars, and I was in the office doing the books. 

Sitting at my desk, I looked out to the
far pump island and saw a cow on the driveway. The animal had a rope
around its neck with a bell hanging from it. I called out to Dan, our
pump-island attendant, and advised him to take care of the situation. He
went out for a closer look and then came running into the station
yelling, “That is no cow—that’s a bull!” 

 “Dan, go grab that rope and lead that animal off the pump island!” I demanded in the most authoritative tone I could muster. 

“No!” he shouted back, “You don’t pay me enough to wrestle bulls!”

“Look,” I reasoned, “That bull is
someone’s pet. It’s got a leash and a bell around its neck. What’s the
big deal?” I turned to the crew: “All right, men, who is going to lead
that bull off of our pump island?” 

“Not me!” they said one by one.  

“Fine. I’ll do it myself!” I moved
slowly toward the bull, making sure of my exit if I needed one. As I got
closer the animal looked docile, almost friendly. I took the rope and
gave it a little tug. The bull grunted, so I jerked the rope harder. But
that stubborn sucker wouldn’t move. 

I wrapped the rope several times around my hand to get a good grip and leaned into him. Just as I began to tug, he took off. 

The stupid thing ran down the highway,
against traffic. I couldn’t let go of the rope because it had tightened
around my hand. I had my snow boots on and I was being pulled through
the snow like a water skier behind a jet boat. Traffic stopped, and
people yelled and clapped as we passed by.   

I started to run with the bull to try to
take the strain off the rope. Finally I managed to get free. I took off
running back up the hill to the service station, and the bull came
after me. When I got to the station I jumped on a wall. The bull made
one last attempt to gore me but missed. Finally, he lost interest and
wandered away.

This story reminds me so much of the
kingdom of God. When we first come into the kingdom it looks friendly,
almost docile. Much like a cow, it seems like we can control and guide
the kingdom to meet our demands and fulfill our every want. Then we tie
our hands of service to the Lord, and the bull takes off running.
Instead of taking it for a walk, it is dragging us through life. 

To make matters worse, all the people we
know and who used to respect us, are watching us go down the highway in
the wrong direction. To complicate the situation, this bull is
invisible to most folks, so we look ridiculous!

My point in telling this story is really
simple: Life in the kingdom is unpredictable, risky and messy. If you
want to have a nice, neat, organized life, you’ll need to eliminate most
of the works of God from your life. Little takes place in the spiritual
realm without taking a risk.

I tell people that in order to grow in
the ministry of the Spirit you must develop a pooper-scooper ministry
along with it. Proverbs puts it like this, “Where no oxen are, the
manger is clean, but much revenue comes by the strength of the
ox” (Prov. 14:4, NASB). Everyone knows what’s in the manger when the
oxen are there. Anytime we have real Holy Spirit ministry there will be a
mess that needs to be cleaned up!

The church must allow God to position us
for confrontations with the kingdom of darkness. The world is waiting
to see true spiritual power, and until the church rises up to
demonstrate it, the world will be held under the power of darkness.  

This was made crystal clear to me once
when I was invited by a local pastor to speak to his class at a state
university on the subject of “Christianity and the Supernatural.” He
taught the course as a way to expose students to the power of God. 

On the way to campus, the pastor
described the class to me: “There will be 21 students. Ten of them are
Christians. Three are into witchcraft, and the rest of them belong to
religions that you probably could not pronounce.”

It was a good thing I hadn’t known what I
was getting myself into until that moment. If I had, I might not have
gone. Fear began to fill my heart. Just as we passed through the
classroom door, the Lord said to me, “I am going to show off today!”

Show off? I thought. Is that in the Bible? Lord, is that You? Before I could receive an answer I was being introduced to the class. 

I began to tell the students about my
life and how the Lord delivered me from a 3 1/2-year nervous breakdown.
Although I was a Christian then, demons visited me during the last year
of my breakdown and tormented me until I became demonized. The Lord
finally delivered me. 

As I told my story, the students hung on
to every word. Finally, the pastor signaled for me to wrap up. As I
made my way out of the classroom, a young woman pushed her way to the
front, saying she had to talk to me.

I said to her: “You think that you are a
psychic, but you have been called to be a prophetess. There has been an
evil spirit assigned to kill you since you were born, and you almost
died at birth.”

She looked shocked.

“Yes!” she yelled out. “I did nearly die
at birth, and there has been a demon trying to kill me ever since I was
born. It came into my room the other night and tried to run over me.”
(I can’t imagine what that must have looked like.)

“Would you like to be free from that evil spirit?” I asked. “Yes,” she replied. 

Intending to pray for her, I got as far
as, “In the name of—” when she fell to the floor right in front of the
doorway with a full-blown demonic manifestation that looked like a grand
mal seizure. I was stunned. Students stood speechless. 

Suddenly I heard the Lord say again, “I am going to show off today!” The pastor looked at me as if to say, “Do something!”

I leaned over and said to the spirit,
“Leave this woman now in Jesus’ name!” Instantly she was delivered—but
then began rolling on the floor in a trancelike state, laughing
hysterically. It was the kind of laughter that made you laugh.

Students for the next class were
arriving, so we carried her into the hallway, but her laughing was so
loud we had to carry her out of the building. She continued laughing
uncontrollably while she rolled on the ground outside.

More students began to gather. I still
wasn’t sure what to do, but I noticed that many people, in what was
mostly an unsaved crowd, were having manifestations of the Holy Spirit.
The next thing I knew, I was pointing to a young man in the crowd and
saying, “Do you want some of this?”

“Yes—no! I don’t know!” he waffled.

“Take it!” I ordered. 

All at once he fell to the ground,
rolling around laughing. I began to point to others and say the same
thing. Within a few moments several people were on the ground laughing
hysterically while others looked on in amazement. God definitely showed
off that day, as He had promised!  

I have had experiences like the one at
that college all over the U.S. I don’t understand people who think
Americans aren’t hungry for God. Everywhere I go I see folks who are
famished and longing for a spiritual awakening, and we have the ability
to demonstrate a gospel of power. 

It’s time for us as the body of Christ
to rise up and receive our inheritance! We can’t be satisfied with
illustrated sermons, great music or friendly services. We have been
called to see the powers of darkness destroyed and our ruined cities
restored.

Wickedness continues to grow all around
us, taking root in the lives of those we love and eroding the foundation
of our country. Yet the words of our Lord Jesus still echo through the
halls of history: “These signs will follow those who believe,” and
“Greater works … he will do because I go to My Father” (Mark 16:17-18,
NKJV; John 14:12).

Satan is being forced to let go of his
demonic stronghold on our cities as God demonstrates His raw power
through His church. We are in the midst of the greatest revival in human
history. Yet there remains a distance between what should be and what will be. That distance is us!

What will we be? We are the bridge between history and His story.
The sick, demonized, poor, blind, lame and lost all are waiting to see
what we have learned. We can’t afford to disappoint them.

Read other miraculous deliverance stories at deliverance.charismamag.com

This article was featured in the June issue of Charisma.