MY PERSONAL TESTIMONY:
Many years ago God lay a burden on my heart. Routinely He would tell me that He had piled lots of power and wisdom on me, and now is the time for me to use it. Of course, being only 20 at the time, I was somewhat confused. What could I do with lots of power? I barely knew anything about anything. I was even having trouble getting through college. Me? Power and wisdom? But the dialogue continued...
God would show me aspects of my life, times where I had made incredibly good decisions. And then He would show me the opposite. Over the course of my life I had put other people in danger, gotten into trouble that should not have happened, and really just made some terribly poor choices. With all those mistakes, how could I have anything to help others?
God would shake His head, and He would say, "You learned from all of it. You learned in powerful fashion. Once you sinned, you not only apologized for it, but you did your best to avoid doing it again." I told Him He was probably correct, well, of course He was correct, this was God. So I told Him that if the time had come for me to work for the Kingdom, then I was as ready as ever. So we started working on some things together.
Our first project was an advice site. It became pretty popular. Of course, this was 1997, and there really were not any advice sites out there. So I started receiving about five to ten emails a day, from people wanting my help. I answered all of them, and published the best ones on the site. This went on for about four and a half years. At that point I was pretty exhausted. So the question went up to the Almighty again. What now, Lord?
He did not answer. In fact, there was no answer for about a year and a half. I used the time to complete college and get married. My wife was wonderful (and still is) and I really was just enjoying my new life.
One day at church I ran into a gentleman who was an accomplished webmaster. I mentioned to him that God had put an idea in my head - a prayer site, where people could publicly offer up their prayers for others to work on. He thought it was a great idea, and so The Intercessors was born. It ran for about eight years. It really helped thousands and thousands of people. But, as with the advice site, it peaked. There came a point where I thought it could not get any better. So I pointed the domains toward another site that was doing a much better job. By now there were many sites that did that kind of thing. But I had noticed something in the process. The one thing that I felt like it missed was the material side of life. Lots of prayer help was happening, but people around the world were starving and getting killed, all for no reason.
And so that is what brings you here. You heard about the kind of work we do. We point out incredibly powerful resources, all around the globe. A lot of them have been around for many years, and are sometimes very popular in their countries of origin. But the odds are that you have never heard of most of them. There is a reason for that. This stuff is not complicated. And it is also free of cost. In this world, these kind of services are glossed over, because no one makes any money by sharing them.
Many years ago God lay a burden on my heart. Routinely He would tell me that He had piled lots of power and wisdom on me, and now is the time for me to use it. Of course, being only 20 at the time, I was somewhat confused. What could I do with lots of power? I barely knew anything about anything. I was even having trouble getting through college. Me? Power and wisdom? But the dialogue continued...
God would show me aspects of my life, times where I had made incredibly good decisions. And then He would show me the opposite. Over the course of my life I had put other people in danger, gotten into trouble that should not have happened, and really just made some terribly poor choices. With all those mistakes, how could I have anything to help others?
God would shake His head, and He would say, "You learned from all of it. You learned in powerful fashion. Once you sinned, you not only apologized for it, but you did your best to avoid doing it again." I told Him He was probably correct, well, of course He was correct, this was God. So I told Him that if the time had come for me to work for the Kingdom, then I was as ready as ever. So we started working on some things together.
Our first project was an advice site. It became pretty popular. Of course, this was 1997, and there really were not any advice sites out there. So I started receiving about five to ten emails a day, from people wanting my help. I answered all of them, and published the best ones on the site. This went on for about four and a half years. At that point I was pretty exhausted. So the question went up to the Almighty again. What now, Lord?
He did not answer. In fact, there was no answer for about a year and a half. I used the time to complete college and get married. My wife was wonderful (and still is) and I really was just enjoying my new life.
One day at church I ran into a gentleman who was an accomplished webmaster. I mentioned to him that God had put an idea in my head - a prayer site, where people could publicly offer up their prayers for others to work on. He thought it was a great idea, and so The Intercessors was born. It ran for about eight years. It really helped thousands and thousands of people. But, as with the advice site, it peaked. There came a point where I thought it could not get any better. So I pointed the domains toward another site that was doing a much better job. By now there were many sites that did that kind of thing. But I had noticed something in the process. The one thing that I felt like it missed was the material side of life. Lots of prayer help was happening, but people around the world were starving and getting killed, all for no reason.
And so that is what brings you here. You heard about the kind of work we do. We point out incredibly powerful resources, all around the globe. A lot of them have been around for many years, and are sometimes very popular in their countries of origin. But the odds are that you have never heard of most of them. There is a reason for that. This stuff is not complicated. And it is also free of cost. In this world, these kind of services are glossed over, because no one makes any money by sharing them.
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