God is faithful to provide what His believing sons and daughters need. More than eight years before I was introduced to the ministry of The Way International, I asked God for help in my personal life, and He sparked a desire within me to hear and understand the Bible. This desire led me from my family’s traditional church to a variety of churches whose major focus in their church services was teaching the Bible. Early in my pursuit of Biblical understanding, I received the new, spiritual birth by believing God’s Word that He had raised Jesus Christ from the dead and by confessing Jesus Christ as my lord.
My hunger for truth intensified, and I attended several church services each week and listened to many hundreds upon hundreds of hours of Christian teaching programs on the radio during those first eight years. The churches I attended were described as Pentecostal, charismatic, or Full Gospel, and each inaccurately taught the “baptism of the Holy Spirit,” meaning a receiving of the third person of the trinity. Spiritual manifestations sometimes occurred in the church services, and I had a genuine desire to receive what they called the “gift of speaking in tongues.” Pastors and church members taught me, prayed with me, and coached me to receive this “gift,” but it never happened for me over those first eight years of my Christian life. It seemed that everyone had their own explanation of this baptism—what it was and how to ask God with prayers and tarrying for this additional gift. As the years went by, I only became more discouraged and confused as to why God did not give me what they called a “prayer language.”
Then one day at work in another city, I met a young woman who confidently told me she knew without any doubt that the instruction she had received on many Christian doctrinal topics was true to God’s Word. She quoted John 10:10, a verse I had been specifically focused on for quite some time, and told me The Way Ministry could teach me how to pray and how to receive God’s blessings to live the more abundant life that Jesus Christ came to make available. This young woman put me in touch with the Branch leaders in my city, and I began attending fellowship meetings.
Within two months, I learned more clear and accurate Biblical truths on foundational Christian doctrines than I had learned in the previous eight years. I learned there is only one true God, Who is Holy Spirit and the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ. I also learned that speaking in tongues is one manifestation of the new birth I had received many years earlier. Toward the end of those first two months of fellowshipping with The Way Ministry, I took the book Receiving the Holy Spirit Today with me on a business trip to another state. As I read it, I understood I had the spiritual ability to speak in tongues and I should stop waiting for something extra from God. I simply began speaking in tongues alone in my hotel room. I knew I was born again of God’s gift of holy spirit, and I could manifest the evidence of my spiritual birth at any time simply by believing to do so. I could pray with my understanding, and I could pray with my spirit.
It was The Way Ministry’s accurate teaching of God’s Word that relieved my years of discouragement regarding the manifestations of holy spirit. God has faithfully provided me true answers on many points of doctrine by the teachings of The Way Ministry for twenty-three years now, and for that I will always be grateful.