Category: Home Fellowship

Note: Names in this sharing have been changed to maintain confidentiality.

I grew up practicing martial arts from the age of seven. Because of this I had much exposure to Eastern religions and witnessed many unexplainable acts. By the age of eleven I understood that there was more to life than just the five senses. Later on I began to teach what I had learned and even did some unexplainable acts myself, not really understanding the spiritual truths involved. The study of other religions led me to drugs and experimentation in the spiritual field. I never saw anything work consistently, and I never found the truth I was looking for.

Skip forward about ten years to when I was in my first factory job. I met a man named Jack. He started to tell me about this Christian group he and his wife were a part of and a class they were taking. I liked Jack, and I considered myself pretty experienced with a lot of religions that turned out to be shams, so I decided to help him realize that this was just a scam to get his money. Every day I would talk to him and see if I could figure out the angle they were using to con him.

Also at this point in my life, I thought I finally found the love of my life. Something good was finally happening. But her family didn’t get along with me at all. I was still using drugs from time to time and I had friends that were criminals, so their attitude was not surprising. This was a big problem for my girlfriend, and we eventually broke up. This was a final straw for me. Some of my friends had taken their own lives and this began to be an option I was thinking about. I had been exposed to a lot of teaching on reincarnation in my youth, so I decided to end this life and try again in another.

I had a high performance car that I was building, and I figured I would use it to kill myself. I knew the right spot to do it. It was a railroad track with a steep ramp on both sides. I figured at over 100 miles an hour, it was a sure thing. As I accelerated to the tracks, a car came over the opposite side with their bright lights on. I flashed my lights several times to get them to go to their low beams. Just then a gasket blew on my engine and since there was no hood on the car, it sprayed oil all over the windshield. All I could think of was, “Great, I’ll probably live through this and kill someone else in the process.” So I stopped and limped my broken car home. I went to work the next day really depressed that I couldn’t even kill myself right.

That day I was working in a sheet metal shop. I was grinding some welds on a panel and I was alone. I had stopped working and just stood there considering all the things I had learned and done in my life and how empty it all really was. I had a home, nice things, money, but something was missing. I thought, “There must be a God, because after all, where did everything come from?” I had seen things that could not be explained. All the Eastern religions I had been exposed to had wisdom but no solid answers. So I said to myself, “OK God, if you are real, you know what I am thinking. I want the truth, but there are so many of these Christian religions. They say you have a son, and I guess I can believe that. Just show me the straightest way to the truth.” Then I waited. The lights didn’t flash; there was no shaking of the ground—nothing. So I said, “Ok God, I’ve been looking for ten years; if I have to wait for another ten years, I will.” And I went back to work. About two minutes later, Jack came up to me and out of the blue said, “Hey, want to come to one of our fellowships?” I said, “Sure, what the hell, why not?” I don’t know who was more surprised, me for saying yes, or him getting an answer like that from me, the one who was telling him every day that he was getting conned by these people.

It took two weeks to get me to go. I expected they would look at me and say, “You’re from the pit of hell!” because in my mind I thought it was probably true. The first fellowship I went to, which they called Twig, was in Jack’s apartment. I saw something in that fellowship I had never experienced before, and I knew I would give anything and do anything to get it. A few weeks later, they were talking about a Christian rock festival in Ohio, but no one owned a reliable car to drive there. So I borrowed a van from my mom and loaded up the Twig, and we went. We were camping in the middle of a race track at a fairground!

I went to the first night with a King James Version Bible I had just bought. A man started teaching, and I started getting irritated at not being able to find the scriptures he was talking about. A man near me asked if I knew the books of the Bible, and when I said no, he was kind enough to find them in my Bible and then in his. By the end of the first night, my face was hurting; I had never smiled that much in my life. Later I learned the man teaching was Dr. Victor Paul Wierwille. I didn’t know who he was until I took the Power for Abundant Living class a couple months later. No one had ever taught me God’s Word so clearly and simply that I could understand it and see that it is truth.

I have had the privilege and honor to sit at the feet of many teachers, but none like Dr. Wierwille. God led me to The Way International and answered my prayer beyond anything I could ever dream of. It was, and is, the shortest way to the truth!

As a young man, it was difficult for me to think there was truth. Too many concepts were called truth that weren’t even close to being similar. It was confusing. I did somehow believe there might be a God.

At work, I had just hired a person to help me run the business who was younger than I was. He had long hair and wore jeans—the hippie look of the day. He was a good worker, and he was the one who ended up telling me about his God. He encouraged me to just read the Bible and not read into it. I didn’t own a Bible; he got my attention though, so I bought one.

It took months of sharing with me his quality of life and his understanding of the Bible before I went with him to fellowship. Then, while in the Foundational Class that the ministry offered, my eyes were opened to begin seeing that there really is truth and there truly is a God. That was a major comfort to my soul. I figured there were others who thought like I had previously thought—confused and questioning. Well, I wanted to find them and help them with what I was learning.

Telling people about how truth can actually set them free has been an excitement of mine to share ever since hearing the truth of the Word. “Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth” (John 17:17). That’s what God’s Word says and that’s what God means! It turned my life around and truth became my standard, whereas before, there was no standard that made any sense.

Having something to follow that promises to always work, now that’s life changing! I started to see direction in my life. That’s what I lacked before. But no more! I thought I was on my way to hell and there was no way to change that. It was a hopeless way to live. What is so eye-opening is that everything I thought life was about was not even close to what God says in His Word. But that was what was missing—I never opened His book to see what was there until I came to this ministry.

The pages of God’s Word are full of life. That’s what I was beginning to absorb. My life was changing. I saw how God didn’t leave anyone out of His love. He tells in His Word of the one Body, referring to the entire Body of Christ. I had never heard that before. What a revelation! Each of us means just as much to God as the other. We are all favored and blessed. This was a big deal for me to get ahold of. What a loving God He really is.

Another thing I was starting to put together was the idea of speaking in tongues. I had never been around it, so it was a huge change for me to consider. Once I started to see the significance of it and how it is fundamental to operating the other eight manifestations, which I had not heard of before either, it was another jump to my heart and soul. When deliverance is so clear and beautiful and life changing, there’s no way to keep that kind of explosiveness inside.

My excitement was through the roof! I started to have a meaningful life! I learned that God forgave me of ALL of my previous ways, my sins, my craziness, my earlier life. What’s the price of that for a person? As I learned more, the price became evident. It was God’s Son, Jesus Christ. He gave his life so I could live mine according to the standard of the Word. You talk about being humbled! Going through my first few classes and still today, I continue to learn and still go through the gamut emotionally. We never forget where we came from, but we always keep moving forward to be the person God has called us to be. That has great appeal for me, and now I love telling people about my God.

If I hadn’t gone to a home fellowship and hadn’t seen the genuineness of God, I would not be here today to write these things. My life is God’s. I know without Him, I am nothing. With Him, I can keep growing to be who He called me to be, which is His masterpiece.

One day in late September, I was in my pickup truck in the parking lot of my employment. I was so hopeless and desperate. I was crying out to God to please help me! I needed Him to show me where to go and what to do next in my life. At that moment, my phone rang. On the other end was a woman I had only met a few times in my life. She asked if I wanted to attend a home fellowship. My crying stopped. I felt better somehow. God was opening up a door for me. God was answering my cry for help. I said, “Yes! Yes! I would love to attend a home fellowship.”

I attended my first home fellowship and then my next one. By October/November I attended my first Foundational Class. God was talking to me and helping me along the way. By January, I was taking the Intermediate Class. By this time, I had learned that all Scripture is God-breathed, which means to be moved by the Holy Spirit, which is revelation. I also learned to pray with the spirit by speaking in tongues. I grew up tithing in my church, but in class I learned that you can NEVER outgive God.

By June, I was in my first Defeating the Adversary class. My knowledge of the adversary and how he operates was growing. We are in a spiritual competition every day: “For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places” (Ephesians 6:12). At that moment I was healed from forty years of pain and resentment that I carried with me. I felt a huge weight off my shoulders. I had a true sense of peace within me. The anger that I kept inside of me against the people that hurt me was gone. The adversary wasn’t going to take or steal from me anymore.

Proverbs 18:21 says, “Death and life are in the power of the tongue….” That scripture changed the way I choose to talk to people. I can open my mouth to hurt someone and make them feel like nothing, or I can choose to open my mouth to edify someone. I can witness to them about how The Way has shown me how to understand God’s Word by rightly dividing the Word, how to know that Christ is in me, and how to know that the Word of God is the will of God.

I began to attend a ministry household fellowship in 1983. Before the first Power for Abundant Living class was run in my country, there was only one household fellowship, held once a week on Sundays on a rotating basis, in the homes of believers who manifested their desire to receive that household fellowship. Believers traveled many miles by foot because transportation was difficult, yet they were willing to attend a household fellowship meeting.

I am also among the faithful who attended that first Foundational Class, and I am still standing in the ministry in my country. We were young people around the age of twenty to twenty-five, but we enjoyed the Word very much. We felt that we had learned much more of the Word and were practicing it accordingly, and we had positive results. The law of believing worked a lot in us. There was no stability in the country because of the war, many raids were carried out, etc., but God responded to our prayers because of the unity of the spirit that we manifested with great impact.

A few years later, I went to live in another city in the province. I started a household fellowship. There were many challenges, but it was a great time for increasing believing, faithfulness, perseverance, and service.

A faithful man will abound with blessings, as stated in Proverbs 28:20. Thanks to God, I found a good wife, already mature in the Word, who came to reinforce or increase my belief in the Word of God, especially in the law of giving and receiving. Together we worked on the rise and expansion of the Word in our city with the assistance of other believers in the household fellowship.

Currently we coordinate an area in the province. We continue lovingly to teach the Word of God to God’s people from generation to generation. Always keeping God and His Word first, we are humble and obedient, and we put others before ourselves with much love, knowing that our labor is not in vain in the Lord, as stated in I Corinthians 15:58.

What God has done for me because of the Word of God I have learned in our ministry is hard to pinpoint as one incident because it is an amalgamation of incidents that happen every day as I put God first in my life.

The biggest thing God has done for me would be helping me learn from the first days of going to a household fellowship Who my heavenly Father is and how I can put Him first in my life. Hosea 4:6 states, “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge….” I was this way before I was invited to a fellowship in The Way Ministry. I didn’t even understand that there were blessings for putting God first in my life! For me it was a complete metamorphosis from acting, living, and behaving one way, to then attending my first Way Ministry fellowship and seeing The Way Corps that ran that fellowship (and Branch), and then wanting to imitate and live life like those two believers were living at that time. I think back to that time, almost thirty years ago. After six weeks of fellowshipping with the believers at that local fellowship, I was a completely changed person. I didn’t recognize myself at all, and that was a good thing!

Up to that time, from a senses point of view, I was a successful and outwardly happy man. But on the inside, I was full of fear and anxiety about just about everything in my life. Therefore Hosea 4:6 rang so true to my heart because I was being destroyed by a lack of knowledge—and I didn’t even know it!

I wake up every day learning more about how to put God first in my life, and for that I will always be thankful to God and for The Way Ministry. I have found that putting God first in my life and living the Word of God to the best of my ability makes new incidents every day on “what God has done for me because of the Word of God I learned in The Way Ministry.”

It all began for me in a house full of strangers and a house full of love.

I remember (like it was yesterday) the night I cried out to God, asking Him to show me that life was worth living. I was beginning to think, What is the point of living? I wasn’t quite sure I was even praying correctly, but I must’ve believed, because God answered my prayer.

I never would have guessed how much my heart would find comfort in a house full of strangers and in a house full of love. It was in a home fellowship that I experienced for the first time the power of the spoken Word and the love of God in manifestation. In that home fellowship, I heard a scripture that my heart found so easy to believe and that made my life worthwhile!

II Timothy 1:7:
For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.

This verse changed my life! Power, love, and a sound mind—these three great realities combat life’s one crippling negative—fear. It’s no wonder the foundational class, called Power for Abundant Living, had my attention instantly. It was becoming obvious to me that God was answering my prayer to live a life that is worthwhile! I signed up for the class and began the journey of how to have power for abundant living.

What has God’s Word done for me? It gave me my life’s dream—to live a worthwhile life! I found it in serving God and His people and in moving His Word. I cannot imagine my life without God. His Word is my touchstone for truth—it melts all my fears away. It’s the basis of my believing and action, and its solidity gives me stability in life. I simply know no other way to live.

It goes to show just how important those invitations to our home fellowships are. Those fellowships, where God’s Word and God’s love live, can change lives! I’m thankful every day for the life-changing invitation I received to a house where God’s Word and God’s love lived. It led me to our Biblical research, teaching, and fellowship ministry where I have learned the keys to understanding God’s Word and heart for my life.

God is what I waited my whole life for, yet from before the foundation of the world, God waited for me to be a part of His family. When I sit down and take it all in, it’s the most humbling reality of my life—I was called of God, and it was always His plan to have me be His child, living a life that’s worthwhile by living His Word.

Great is Thy faithfulness, O God my Father,
There is no shadow of turning with Thee;
Thou changest not, Thy compassions, they fail not;
As Thou hast been Thou forever wilt be.

The truth of God’s rightly divided Word that I received and believed in The Way Ministry rescued me out of the darkness of this world bringing me back home to my heavenly Father’s arms of love. The Father that I learned about in the home Bible fellowships and then in the Foundational Class has been a Father who has been faithful and unchanging in showing me His love and compassion for over forty-two years.

How thankful I am for my parents who instilled in me a love for God. And how thankful I am for my brothers that introduced me to The Way Ministry and to the class on the Bible that unfolded to me a knowledge of the God I was taught to love.

Through the years He has never failed me. I can remember the summer after taking the class on the Bible when I first moved away from my Indiana home with a sibling to Washington state. This was significant because I saw how God was faithful to me as His child to always take care of me.

After settling into our new home and securing employment, life seemed to move along just as it did before without much concern even though I was quite a distance from my familiar upbringing. After a few months I began to feel lonely and lost. I realized the answers I was looking for I had already, but I couldn’t grow on my own—I needed other like-minded believers. Then I remembered that my brother who introduced me to the ministry had given me a phone number to contact the leadership in my new state to find the local fellowship closest to me. I remembered I could always go to my heavenly Father in prayer, and He would be faithful to help me. So I got on my bike that late afternoon, rode to a nearby phone booth, contacted the leadership, and was given a phone number and address of the closest fellowship.

As I was riding my bike, I stopped a few blocks from my home. I couldn’t believe it, I moved thousands of miles from Indiana, and I found that the address I was given was only a few blocks from my home here in Washington state. I decided to knock on the door right then and there. A smiling face opened the door; I explained I was a believer from Indiana and was welcomed in with open arms. To my surprise, songbooks were neatly laid out on chairs because it was fellowship night! Well, that began my journey on proving the truth of God’s rightly divided Word in my own life and learning that great is God’s faithfulness.

Here I am forty-two years later, and His faithfulness to me as His child has been proven over and over again in every category of life because I had a hunger to know God and was taught to know Him through this ministry. Through every season of life He has supplied abundantly. In the calm and in the storm He has been unchanging, forever faithful with no shadow of turning. His compassions have failed not, and as He was in my youth, He forever will be now and through all eternity.

My growth in the Word is due to two important factors:

1. My family:

I am very grateful to God for being born into a family of believing parents who taught me that the first thing to consider in life is the Word of God; they showed me the path of truth from which I will never depart.

2. My environment:

After being convinced of this truth, I used all the ways that were available that could help me to grow in the Word of God. The peaceful environment of the household fellowship meetings I attend every week allowed me to gain spiritual growth. I am always seeking to enjoy the countless blessings that God always pours on during fellowship. Since our lord has not yet returned, we must stand steadfast in this household enjoying these wonders that God continues to make available.

I am very convinced of this true Word. Therefore, let’s stand on the Word of God, enjoying this healthy food that produces remarkable growth in the lives of those who apply the Word.

Before I began attending fellowship, I was always worried and sometimes stressed about little things that I could not control. I didn’t even own a Bible. I would watch the news and let the world and the things in it scare me. The foundational class on The Way of Abundance and Power opened my eyes and showed me how to be fearless, to be powerful, to not let the worldly things distract from what was really in front of me, to always look to God’s Word. After I learned the Word, I realized that was what I lacked. I prayed, but I did not get results like I do now. I went to church, but I did not get the answers I’d been looking for. I’m not saying what I did before was incorrect or wrong. What I’m saying is I did not get the knowledge and teaching I have now. From the Word taught, I learned about having Christ in me and that I am now truly a child of God. I am victorious, I have so much more confidence in myself because of God and His fellowship, and I hold myself to a higher standard than what I used to.

Now, instead of worrying I pray and speak in tongues to my Father and trust in Him. I don’t watch the news like I used to every day, and I deactivated my social media accounts. It feels so empowering. God leads me in the right direction, and He always has. I was just blind back then, but I now see results; and it’s just so amazing what God and the Word has done for me and my beautiful family. I now own a Bible that I cherish, and I love looking up Bible verses and writing them. God has been so patient with me. He always had a path for me that I did not see. I was just going in the wrong direction and had negative results.

I thank The Way Ministry for making these fellowship groups available. I especially thank my fellowship coordinator for blessing me and making the foundational class on The Way of Abundance and Power available to me. Because of God’s love and His Word, I have learned so much (and am still learning), and my life has been so positive since.

I am very thankful for the truths and principles that I have learned from The Way Ministry over the years that have given me boldness and brought strength to my life.

In my early years I was very shy. Many times people commented on how quiet I was, which made me even more self-conscious. In college I dropped a public speaking class after the first night because I was so nervous and shaken. Later, after attending a few fellowships and classes in our ministry, I was invited to teach God’s Word. I was relaxed and enjoyed the experience because I was confident in what I was speaking about. I was taught not to focus on myself but on giving to the people present. The more I taught and joined in fellowship witnessing, the more I grew in making this weak area a strength. To this day, teaching and speaking God’s Word are among my favorite things in life, and I rarely pass up an opportunity to do both. I have successfully applied these principles as a Way Disciple, employee, performer, and in helping to run fellowships and classes. This victory has extended into many areas of my life and has freed me up to serve God even greater!