Monday, October 26, 2009

A Transformation Testimony

Prayer and revival has been a part of my Christian life from the very first weeks as a new believer.

As a new believer, a serviceman in Nha Trang, Vietnam, I was brand new to the faith. I came to Christ through the witness of a former High School friend on January 3, 1969 while on leave on my way to Viet Nam. I soon found the Christian Servicemen’s Center, and began to devour books by Andrew Murray, Oswald Chambers, A.W. Tozer and other prayer and revival authors.

Over the years, as a pastor, prayer and revival were always a part of my heart and my teaching.
In fact, the reality is that those who were in my churches did not always embrace the messages regarding prayer and revival.

In 1998, I entered the world of non-profit prayer ministries. It was in 1999 that I first saw the Transformations video. I brought together a number of pastors, and after we watched that first video depicting God’s transforming revival, I stood up before these fellow workers and exclaimed, “This is something I can give my life for.” Little did I know how the Lord would take me up on that statement.

In the years as Executive Director of Prayer Transformation Ministries, I was drawn closer and closer to the amazing stories coming from the Sentinel Group. We continued to work closely with the Sentinel Group. In 2005 I had the privilege of attending Transform World Indonesia in Jakarta. In those years, our ministry published several Prayer Guides on the topic of Transformation and the healing of the land.

2008 was a watershed year in this journey. I was not only able to attend the Torchlight Training sponsored by The Sentinel Group in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, but I was also able to be a part of the Sentinel Fire Tour and visit several communities that are currently undergoing transforming revival. The effect on me was explosive. In my journaling and in later descriptions I likened the change to a change in my very DNA. No longer would transforming revival simply be something that I believed in and taught, but it would be a part of the very fabric of who I had become.

The honest truth is, that I have been ruined now for anything less the completely transforming manifest presence of God. We talk about these things, but until we truly see and experience what the presence of the Almighty God can do, we will settle for the lesser. That is not to put myself in some sort of elevated place, on the contrary, it is absolutely humbling…the things that I have seen. But if you know what a real dollar bill is like, you will never settle to accept a counterfeit bill.

In this blog, I will be sharing stories of transformation, and talking about the principles of transformation as seen now in almost 900 communities around the world, as well as Biblical and historical teaching on this needy subject.

Watch for my next post

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