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Set Free with the Truth of God’s Word

I was about ten years old. I had just lost my father and I was miserable. My mother had received many sympathy cards, but one in particular troubled me. It read something like, “He is not gone, he is just away.” I thought to myself, “What a lie!” At the time I didn’t know the truth of God’s Word, but I knew that my father was GONE.

It wasn’t until I was witnessed to almost ten years later that I was set free with the truth of God’s Word. The reality that when people fall asleep, they don’t immediately go to heaven, cleared away all the fog of deception. I no longer was troubled with the thought that my father might be watching me. I believed that my father was born again, so to realize that he was asleep and awaiting the return of our lord Jesus Christ, set my heart at peace.

I was so blessed to have a clear understanding about what happens when a person who knows that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and is born again falls asleep. They have no consciousness. Their next waking moment will be the return of Jesus Christ.

The Way Ministry and the book Are the Dead Alive Now? set before people who want to know the truth regarding this subject so that they can be free in their hearts and minds about what happens when believers fall asleep.

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Free to Enjoy a Life More Than Abundant

When I got witnessed to, I was wearing a T-shirt with John 8:32 printed on the front.

And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.

At the time, I didn’t know the magnitude of this verse until I started attending a home Bible fellowship, participating in our ministry’s classes, and applying God’s Word that I was receiving. The more of God’s Word I understood, the more John 8:32 became a reality to me. As a result, I have experienced deliverance and freedom from bondage in many categories of my life.

One particular category that I am thankful to know the truth about is the subject of death and what really happens when someone “falls asleep,” as God’s Word so gently puts it. To me, there is no greater pain than that of losing a loved one. But God, Who is the God of all comfort and Who comforts us in all our tribulation (II Corinthians 1:3 and 4), lets us know that when Jesus Christ returns, the dead in Christ shall rise first (I Thessalonians 4:16)!

Having lost a teenage sibling in the early stage of my Christian walk and recently my dearly beloved mother, knowing these truths has freed me from having a broken heart and has allowed me to stay thankful for all that God has done for me and continues to do. It is the truth of the Word that we experientially know that makes us free—free to enjoy a life more than abundant that Jesus Christ came to make available!

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Someone Reached Out to Me

Lost in this crooked and perverse world, without understanding the rightly divided Word of God, to me, is an appalling place to reside. This is where I was almost a decade ago. To make it even worse, I didn’t know I was there. The veil on my face was not as the one brides wear on their wedding day. Mine was pitch black. Spiritually, I had no compass, completely no sense of direction. Church was not exciting to me. It was more of a social place to meet friends, catch up on the hot trends, go out and eat lunch, and call it a day. Due to wrong doctrine, I believed in backsliding (ability to lose your salvation due to sin), and at this point in my life, I was “born again” at least fifteen times. Romans 10:9 and 10 were very familiar verses.

The Way International’s decision to send Way Disciples to my city changed my life. I met this young lady who had committed six months of her life to go and serve and to teach people who hunger and thirst after God’s matchless Word. I was in the valley of human need and she reached out to me with her love, care, and tenderness. Just watching her deportment and Biblical accuracy struck my attention. She was a living epistle (II Corinthians 3:2). I didn’t even wait for her to invite me to fellowship. I invited myself. Little did I know how my future was going to unfold from this day.

Fast forward eight years later and here I am a graduate of all these classes on the Bible: Foundational, Intermediate, Defeating the Adversary, Living God’s Word as a Family, The Renewed Mind: The Key to Power, Living the Mystery as Members in Particular, Practical Keys to Biblical Research, and the Advanced Class. I don’t know how many years it would have taken me to do all this research on my own. I thank The Way International for saving me one of the most precious things we have—time. Now I have time to do more for God.

Remember the young lady? She is now my wife, and we have an amazing five-year-old girl who is bold to speak the Word. We now coordinate a home fellowship. My eyes of understanding have been enlightened. The pitch-black veil is no longer covering my vision and direction. I understand that I’m a vehicle that will move God’s Word. With the gift of holy spirit, I can manifest power from on high. God has endued me with strength and the capability to change the trajectory of someone’s life by helping them get born again.

I now enjoy reading the Bible and working the Word in my life. The Way International is still providing me with Sunday Teaching Services, Way Magazines, online articles—talk about abundance! To date, I have not run out of articles to study. I’m thankful for the leadership the ministry has set in place from the Board of Directors all the way to the home fellowship coordinators. The prevailing Word has kept on moving throughout the years, and I’m grateful the “Mystery Train” stopped by and picked me up on the way.

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God’s Deliverance in the Face of Medical and Financial Challenges

Several years ago in August, I was experiencing pain in my side, so I went to a major clinic in my city to have some tests done. Later that month, they referred me to an oncology center for more tests and eventual surgery. The bills for those appointments and tests were mounting higher and higher. I had no insurance and only a part-time job. Then the doctor found cancer cells, so I started chemo at the end of September. More bills were coming in.

I knew from the Word that I didn’t want my healing to be slowed down by worry and fear of not being able to pay the bills. My family and I tried outside sources for help, but found none. Some of our bills were not being paid fast enough, and the medical center was going to send our bills to collections. I immediately communicated with all our bill collectors about our situation and all that we were doing to remedy it, and then asked What can we do? Using a principle I have learned—communication—we got each agency to group their bills together; for example, instead of the medical center sending five separate bills, we received one bill. Because we communicated with them, we were able to work out a solution and not get sent to collections. Yay! We faithfully stuck to our agreement which is yet another principle taught by our ministry.

Another big principle we continued to practice was living within our means. We had been living debt-free for five years, so we did not have a lot of other bills too. In March (just seven months later) I was done with chemo, but the doctor still wanted to see me every three months. One by one the payments were made; one by one collectors called us, and even though we had a long way to go, we were told that we did not owe any more money.

What did God do for us? God took care of over $100,000 of our debt!

Two years later, we were again debt-free, and have remained so. And four years after that, I was given a clean bill of health. My doctor visits were over. Yay!

We are so thankful, first to God for all He has done for us—big things like this incident and the everyday small things. Also, we are thankful to The Way Ministry that has taught us His Word so we know victory is always ours.

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God Took Care of Me in So Many Ways

Sunday, April 21, was a day I will always remember. It was the day I lost the home I was living in at the time. But I also remember it as a day that God took care of me in so many ways.

My plans for that day were simple. I needed to run a few errands, go home, shower, have a bite for lunch, and pick up another believer in my area to drive to a home fellowship meeting that afternoon. On one of my stops, I got a call from another believer in the area whose landlord was having some work done on his house. This believer wanted to get away from all the noise in the house, so he was hoping we could meet for a quick lunch at a local restaurant. I agreed to his invitation. This only involved a small change in my plans, in that I needed to leave home about an hour earlier to meet him, rather than having my lunch at home. We met for lunch, and as we were leaving the restaurant, we heard the alarm at the fire station just across the street. At the time, I had no idea that the alarm was for a fire taking place at the apartment building where I lived.

From there, I went to pick up my other believer friend, and we drove to the fellowship meeting, about an hour away. After the meeting, we drove toward home and decided to get supper together. After supper, I drove her back home, then proceeded back to my home. This was around sunset, and as I entered the parking lot, I first noticed an unusual number of people outside the apartment building. I then noticed that the side of the building closest to the parking lot appeared to have collapsed. As I looked closer, I saw that all the apartment windows in that portion of the building were boarded up, including mine. I finally asked one of my neighbors what had happened, and he calmly explained there had been a fire in the building about six hours earlier. At that point, I realized that the alarm I heard earlier was for my apartment building. And I realized that had I not left home when I did to meet my friend, I most likely would have been home when the fire broke out.

The neighbor I spoke to suggested that I go over to the nearby community center, where an American Red Cross counseling team was stationed to help residents affected by the fire. These people were just wonderful. After checking my name on their list of residents, one of the counselors explained what she understood to be the cause of the fire, and that my apartment was either damaged by the fire itself, by the smoke, or by water used by the firefighters to prevent the spread of the fire. She also said that not one person was injured. In the midst of everything, knowing this fact was such a blessing to me, as it freed my mind to focus on other details. I thought to myself that because it was a beautiful early Sunday afternoon when the fire occurred, many of the residents may have been outside, just living life.

The conversation with the counselor turned to getting some of my immediate needs taken care of. First, she asked if I needed somewhere to stay that night. I believed the best place for me to stay temporarily was at my brother’s house. He was relatively close to where I worked at the time. I immediately called him, told him what happened, and asked if staying at his house was available. The counselor provided me with a generic gift card, so I could purchase certain clothing and other necessities. She was also able to arrange for an emergency replacement of some prescription medicines I was taking at the time. Finally, she reminded me to contact my insurance company in the morning to handle my long-term housing needs. There was an opportunity to witness to her, which I’ll elaborate on later.

After spending the first night at my brother’s house, I went to work at my job in the morning. My boss actually already knew about the fire from the local newspaper. He was very understanding and allowed me to take breaks during the day to make phone calls to my insurance agents and other people regarding my housing situation. I reached out to everyone in my fellowship to inform them and to ask for their prayers.

One of the benefits of my insurance policy was to provide temporary replacement housing for up to one year. The agent I spoke with took down some information, noting where I might like to live, and said she’d call me as soon as she had any prospects. My sister-in-law also looked online for rentals in the area. By Friday, April 26, five days after the fire, she found something that she thought would meet my need. It was a fully furnished, one-bedroom apartment on the ground floor of someone’s house. I met the prospective landlord after work that Friday. He gave me the tour of the place, and I was amazed that the apartment included a large TV, with cable, and a kitchen full of dishes and utensils well beyond what I needed. We discussed the rent amount, and I agreed to move in the next day.

In looking back at the events of April 21 and the week that followed, I clearly see what God has done for me. First, He fully protected me by working in my believer friend’s heart to invite me for lunch, thus physically getting me out of harm’s way when the fire broke out. For this to happen, I also had to trust that God was working in the situation for me to change my plans.

Proverbs 3:5,6:
Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding.
In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.

Second, learning that nobody was injured by the fire blessed me by easing my mind and enabling me to focus on other details. The American Red Cross counselor I spoke with almost seemed surprised at how calm and composed I was. This opened a door for me to share God’s Word. I recall sharing 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 helped her to understand that even faced with a difficult situation, I was able to stay focused and avoid succumbing to emotions.

Third, my immediate basic needs were taken care of, starting with shelter. This brings to mind Matthew 6:31-33:

Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed?
(For after all these things do the Gentiles seek:) for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things.
But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.

Fourth, in a relatively short period of time, I found temporary replacement housing which was more than sufficient for my needs. This issue occupied my mind for a few days after the fire. But I knew that my prayers, as well as those of the local believers, would bring deliverance.

Philippians 4:6:
Be careful [Be anxious] for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God.

We have a great, big, wonderful God. And it’s just so awesome how He takes care of us in all of life’s situations.

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The Straightest Way to the Truth

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!

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God Has Never Failed Me

For the first nineteen years of my life I was raised as a Christian, but I was never taught how to truly live the Word of God. In the fall of 1985, when I turned twenty years old, I took our ministry’s Foundational Class for the very first time. In that class, I learned that The Way Ministry is a how-to ministry, meaning that we don’t just tell people they ought to live the Word of God, but we teach people how to live the Word of God. Learning how to live God’s Word and seeing the powerful benefits was and still is an exciting learning adventure for me.

One of the great and many practical truths that I learned in my first few months in the ministry was how to keep God first. Matthew 6:33 tells us about keeping God first and the benefits of doing so. “But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.” As we keep God first, He promises to meet our every need. As I applied this truth in my personal life and with the believers in my local area, I began to see God’s prosperity in so many ways. This inspired me to make greater commitments to God because I had the utmost confidence that He would take care of my every need.

In the summer of 1986, I signed up to participate in our ministry’s outreach program at that time. I remember the wonderful excitement I had to reach others with the truth that I knew and the believing anticipation I had to see how God was going to meet all of my needs. Four of us were assigned to a midwestern state of the United States. The morning after we arrived to our city, we were eating breakfast at the home of our local leadership. We were talking about where we would go shopping for furniture and other items that we needed for our home.

As we were planning our day, we noticed that the next-door neighbor was having a yard sale. Since we were staying right next door, we had the opportunity to shop before any other customers arrived. Our plan was to pick up a few items then continue elsewhere with our shopping. As we looked at the items available in the yard sale, we began to realize that the neighbor had everything we needed to fully furnish our new home, including kitchen supplies. The only thing we still needed, and I mean the only thing, was our beds, which we had before we moved into our new place.

Seeing God meet our need so beautifully gave us great joy. For the rest of the year, we were never fearful, but had complete confidence that God would meet our every need, no matter how big or small, as we continued to keep Him first. Since that time, I have graduated into The Way Corps, gotten married, raised two wonderful children, and successfully served in many different ways as a Way Corps minister. Throughout the past thirty-plus years, in various seasons of life and in all kinds of circumstances and situations, God has never failed me once as I have kept Him first. He has abundantly met my every need.

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Rescued from a Disastrous Life

One day when I was eighteen years old, I was driving around my hometown for hours with a friend of mine. We were anxious and becoming more and more frantic as we would go from location to location checking with friends and acquaintances. What were we desperately trying to find? Someone who would sell us some marijuana because we had just run out.

Did I think I had a problem at the time? Besides the fact that it was illegal for me to buy what I wanted, and I REALLY wanted it and couldn’t find it, at times I would get honest with myself. I realized that I was dependent on smoking something to be satisfied or happy and it was wrong for that thing to have a hold on me. In addition when I came down from being high, it wasn’t good at all. At times I was lethargic, and my short-term memory was failing.

The American Addiction Center states that it is a myth that psychological addiction is not as serious as physical addiction and that they are not mutually exclusive. After smoking marijuana for a year, I began taking hallucinogenic drugs such as LSD and mescaline and had bad experiences, but kept on taking them.

Now marijuana is legal in some states. That does not make it right and does not take away the dangers.

When I got introduced to The Way International and began believing God’s Word, I got delivered. I consider myself as being truly rescued from a disastrous life. I saw that Jesus Christ gave his life for me and God raised him from the dead so I could be delivered from temptations. I was complete in Christ, nothing lacking. I developed a wonderful confidence and trust in God, whereas before I knew in my heart of hearts that I was not living as God intended. Continual fellowship with fellow believers was the best environment for my new freedom. My memory problems subsided, and I was actually able to memorize a great deal of scripture which increased my believing!

I Peter 5:8:
Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour.

I am truly thankful that someone had enough love to invite me to a fellowship and undershepherd me into the Foundational Class. I am thankful that God loved me right where I was at.

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The Power of Speaking in Tongues

While at my husband’s company holiday party, the entertainment for the evening was a hypnotist. He brought five people on stage to try to get them to do things by putting them in a trance. My husband and I were sitting with another believer couple he worked with. We all looked at each other and agreed that we would quietly speak in tongues to stop this man from hypnotizing people. We spoke in tongues while the man labored over forty-five minutes to get the people on stage to do what he wanted them to do. There were only a few things he could do at first. He began really sweating and working hard to try to operate this spiritual power but was not having good success. After being unable to hypnotize anyone further, he apologized to the crowd in the room and said, “Folks, I’m sorry. I don’t understand this. I just can’t seem to get this going.” We knew exactly why. It was the power of speaking by the spirit of God in a united front of four believers that backed down this man’s devilish power from operating. Dr. Victor Paul Wierwille, our Founding President, once said, “If we knew how powerful speaking in tongues is, we would do it all the time.”

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I Have Freedom from the Worst of All Fears

Among the many things God has done specifically for me because of the Word I have learned, the very first thing He did was to erase all the fear of the future I carried around since I was a teenager. I came to the ministry in 1987 at the age of twenty-five. Prior to that time, the best I knew about my future was that it appeared to be very finite in scope, meaning, and duration. My father was both a scientist and business executive. When I was a teenager, he showed me what he thought was the meaning of my life by breaking down my entire future into numbers. According to him, I was expected to have about forty productive years in the workforce at just over 2,000 working hours per year, and thus I would need so-and-so much money to live comfortably in retirement. That meant I had to have a certain-sized salary in order to save enough money to live out my time. He broke down my life into a series of financial calculations. No more.

From that time on, I found my life consumed with the struggle to accept that forecast. How depressing the outcome of my life seemed to be. I routinely asked myself, “Is that all there is?” “Is that all my life means?” As far as I could know, I was simply marking time. Then, one Friday afternoon, somebody asked if I wanted to go to fellowship that Sunday morning. I can’t recall what was taught during that first time sitting in a ministry fellowship. What I will never forget is the recognition that I had just heard in twenty minutes more truth directly from the Bible than I had heard in the sum of my twenty-five years previously. So, it was easy to say, “Yes!” to the ministry’s Foundational Class. It was there that I was taught John 10:10:

The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.

That was revolutionary to me. All I had ever had up to that point was the less than abundant life. Right away, all my fears about having no real future were beginning to melt away. Then, I was taught about Romans 10:9 and 10 and the eternal life that was not vague and mysterious. It was presented clearly and plainly, right from the pages of God’s Word. And, I could see that it was so simple to obtain as well. From that time, I never looked back. Where once I thought my dead-end existence would eventually just end in death, I now had life, and eternal life at that. Eventually, the ministry taught me from the pages of God’s Word about the purpose for my life in service to my heavenly Father. Instead of an idle existence, lasting for only a few bleak years, I now have an important and meaningful life with the hope of eternal life that will be just as meaningful. Thanks to this ministry, I have freedom from the worst of all fears. And, I am thankful.

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