Basking in Fullness of Joy

We sat gathered around tables in the basement living room where the Word Over the World Ambassadors lived, listening to audiotapes of Dr. Victor Paul Wierwille teaching the foundational class on Power for Abundant Living. Chapter and verse, what does the Word say?—of the many, many golden nuggets in the class, this one really stood out. The teacher encouraged us to not take his word for it, but to go to Scripture, utilizing the research tools we had been taught, and discover the truths for ourselves. This was new and revolutionary to me. For the first time, I had a “firm rock in the sea of speculation, a safe anchorage in the ocean of doubt.” I could read and understand the Word for myself, and I could see current events, trends, opinions, traditions, fads, and ideas through the lens of God’s Word. This has been invaluable to me in my continued stand on God’s Word.

If I were to state a theme verse for my life, the following is a likely candidate:

Psalms 16:11:
Thou wilt shew me the path of life: in thy presence is fulness of joy; at thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore.

Being able to discern truth from error—to determine what the Word says—has given me great peace of mind. We live in a complicated and distracting world, and knowing how to filter all the impressions and demands for our attention is vital for a balanced life. This has given me the encouragement I have needed to stand. It has helped me mature and grow into the best version of myself. What has God done for me because of the Word of God I have learned in The Way Ministry? He has provided me with a life that is beyond what I could ask for or think of. He has given me access to the household of God, where I can enjoy fellowship with like-minded believers and a meaningful, personal relationship with my heavenly Father. I can practice the presence of God, basking in fullness of joy and pleasures forevermore.

We Enjoyed the Word Very Much

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.

More Blessed Than I Could Have Imagined

The very idea that the Bible could be understood was a concept that I personally thought to be impossible. Like many of my friends, I had tried to read it, and to me it was a dull book with sections that were just too hard to comprehend. I could make no sense of it, let alone actually live it. Yet I wanted to know God and tried different religions. I talked “at” God without results I could see. Eventually I just gave up thinking that understanding and finding God would ever happen for me.

After joining the navy, I walked in on a fellowship being held in my barracks room. For the first time ever, I heard someone teach the Bible so that it made sense. I understood it clearly and simply.

I was excited and talked to the teacher right after that fellowship, wanting to know where he learned that. He showed me some of Dr. Wierwille’s books and told me about a class and The Way Ministry. A few months later, I sat through the class and saw that the Bible not only made sense and that I could understand it, but I also learned how to work it to answer any question I had while reading it. Not only that, I learned keys to glean truth from its pages with a certainty and absolute trustworthiness that left all doubts behind.

I was a person that thought God hated me, and I hated myself, thinking I was unlovable. I had come to see God as this vengeful character just waiting to punish me because I was no good. I’d often consider myself as better off if I just died.

I was born again at a young age but had no perception of that occurrence until I started to see the truth from God’s Word unlocked. I learned that I had been saved years before—something I got from churches I visited while seeking God. I grew up speaking in tongues but did not know what it was or what it meant. The truths that this ministry unlocked for me gave me a life that I had no idea existed.

Every day since then has been a growing adventure of finding treasures about my real future, my heavenly Father, and His real love for me. The life I live now is rich and fuller than I could have known or believed back then. The Way International has shown me a family, over the last forty-plus years, that is more wonderful than any I have ever known.

That family continues today with people who are rich in love, thankfulness, and caring that is so real, it must be experienced to appreciate it. What over seventy-five years of The Way International, with Dr. Wierwille’s teaching and research by way of the books and classes, have given me is a real life where my future is certain and more blessed than I could have imagined.

Experiencing God’s Abundance and Power

My Love for Reading God’s Word Grew

Reading was never high on my list because of the complexity of words used. I needed a dictionary for every paragraph I read. It was so time-consuming that it took all the joy out of reading for me.

However, after sitting through a series of classes offered by this ministry, my love for reading grew enormously. I could not believe how much I loved reading and learning about God’s Word. It truly made life more meaningful; I finally had answers.

Being taught how to read and understand the Bible gave me a better comprehension of why things happen the way they do. Things became much clearer to me. Every topic in the Word is well written and well explained, and I could unveil it as I read. There is not one question that I can’t find an answer to as I read God’s Word.

The Way Ministry has made the true, living God known in my life. It has given me a deeper appreciation for God and His love for the Body of believers, and it all began with teaching me how to love to read God’s Word.

God’s Abundant Supply

God has certainly blessed us over our years of standing with The Way International. One incident that comes to mind happened when we had attended a ministry event where we received an abundance of God’s Word. Way Productions did a skit on Hannah at this event also (I Samuel 1—2).

Prior to attending this event, as a couple we had gone through over three years of infertility work. The result of the work was not a pregnancy. We decided to step back from that goal for a couple of years and then revisit it.

As usual we were very blessed at the event, and the Word hit the sweet spot. It had been a couple of years since we had been in a doctor’s office. Within months of this event, we had a family started—without any infertility work. The doctor that we had witnessed to and worked with a few years prior actually delivered the baby.

It has been exciting over the years to receive the Word in so many ways in this ministry. The classes, Sunday Teaching Services, The Way Magazine, and the website all constantly hit the sweet spot and keep us functioning in the Body of Christ.

The God Who Gave Me Back My Life

I am thankful for what God has done for me via the Word of God that I have learned in this life-giving ministry of The Way International. Let me start by saying that I most likely would not be alive today had it not been for the working of God’s mighty power that was ministered to me thirty-nine years ago. I became very ill and was in a coma at the time—with little hope of survival—until a Way believer ministered God’s healing to me. Within twenty-four hours I was out of my coma, delivered from the grip of the adversary, and on the road to recovery.

It was because of this deliverance that I wanted to know more about this God that loved me so much that He gave me my life back. I started to attend household fellowships and eventually took our ministry’s class series on The Way of Abundance and Power. It has been a blessed journey as I’ve continued to learn and manifest God’s power in my life and have helped to bring others to God’s family. My life today is centered around God’s will and service to His people. I am reminded daily of His power and love as I go to Him in prayer and thankfulness for who I am in Christ and for the power of His spirit that I have to live with and reach out to His people with.

I am thankful for this ministry—for men and women who answered God’s call and made His Word available to me and helped me to build a lasting relationship with the God Who gave me back my life.

Accurate Teaching Relieved Years of Discouragement

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.

Finding Confidence and Fearlessness through God’s Word

From Full of Fear to Full of Believing!

The Word of God that I have learned in The Way Ministry has changed my life. Through the many classes, my Word Over the World Ambassador experiences, and the many opportunities to serve, I have built an “I can do” attitude! I have seen great deliverance over the years because of my faithfulness to control my thinking by believing the Word one day at a time. I have learned to not let the circumstances control my life, and I have learned that God will supply all of my need. I have seen God deliver me from being full of fear to being confident in my daily walk with Him. I have seen that with God all things are possible. The Word of God works when we believe!

The greatest VICTORY over the years has been to go from being full of fear to being full of believing! I am forever grateful for the many vehicles that The Way Ministry makes available so that the rightly divided Word can be learned and applied; all of our classes are designed to provide the maximum amount of learning in a minimum amount of time. I was spiritually thirsty, but I have been filled to overflowing with the Word of God taught by The Way Ministry. I have been able to receive God’s Word, retain God’s Word, and release God’s Word with others, which has contributed to my wholeness. God is able and willing, and with the spirit of God dwelling within me, “I can do”!

I Could Choose What I Would Think About

When I was about ten years old, I started having a hard time going to sleep at night. I would lie awake going over the day and worrying about things….Would I do well on my test tomorrow? Why did my friend say that unkind thing to me? Am I good enough to go to heaven? What is hell like? Will the monster in the closet finally get me tonight? For an hour or two after going to bed, I would ponder questions like these and agonize over what-ifs. I didn’t feel like I had anyone I could go to with my troubles, so I mostly kept them to myself.

Fast-forward ten years to my first encounter with The Way Ministry. The green sign-up card for the Foundational Class had a number of claims that students had reported the class had done for them. One was “overcomes worry and fear.” My fears had intensified and become more complex during those ten years. (What will I do with my life? What if no one ever wants to marry me? What if I get cancer? What if we have a nuclear war?) So overcoming worry and fear was just what I wanted and needed, although it seemed too good to be true.

As I sat in that Foundational Class and heard the Word, I believed maybe, just maybe, it was true. I learned that God didn’t want me to be fearful, but He gave me power, love, and a sound mind. I learned that I could take my troubles to my heavenly Father and He would take care of everything. And I learned that I didn’t have to follow my emotions and feelings, but instead I could choose what I would think about. That last one especially was a completely new concept to me. I found a confidence and fearlessness that I had never experienced before, and it was exhilarating!

Years later I went through a difficult transition in my life. Again I was experiencing sleepless nights and troublesome thoughts revolving in my mind. I knew the thoughts were contrary to the Word, but how to turn them off? My solution was to choose a verse and keep repeating it until I went to sleep. If I woke in the middle of the night and my mind started down a negative path, I would start reciting Isaiah 26:3: “Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee: because he trusteth in thee.” I would say it over and over until God’s Word derailed the negative thoughts, because I can only hold one thought at a time. I did that for many months, and it worked every night I needed to use it.

The Way Ministry has taught me so many things these forty-plus years, and everything I’ve applied with faithfulness and believing has worked. The Word just works. I thank God that He called me to this ministry so I could learn His Word.

I Have Really Gotten to Bless My Boss’s Life

This past year I have had the pleasure of working at a very prosperous family-owned company. I started out there as a receptionist; then as I continued to ask for more work, my boss kept moving me up within the company until I got the position of an assistant project manager. What a blessing that was, as I got a lot of experience within a short amount of time. I enjoyed believing God to really meet the company’s needs, and doors just kept flying open to do more business.

For a few months during the year, my boss had gotten burdened down with pressures that carried over in how she treated me. She started to expect a lot from me and would often lash out at me. During this time, I had to really bolster my believing to continue to work there because I felt that God put me there for a reason. Every time I thought about finding a new job, I was just not peaceful about it.

So, I kept sharing my heart with God, and other believers kept encouraging me and helped me keep my thoughts on God rather than my circumstances. I inched toward changing my thoughts about the situation by starting to pray for my boss more. Then, finally, when I decided to really go to God and His Word to find verses that addressed the fears that I had about the situation, the pressure my boss kept putting on me started to slow down.

I kept going to God whenever I was afraid of the situation, knowing that His Word is TRUTH. When I did this, the Devil most certainly had to flee from me (James 4:7).

Toward the end of my time working for this company, I have really gotten to bless my boss’s life by the unconditional love of God that I manifest toward her. I live the Word toward her and think the Word of her, just like God does of me.

I have forgotten the past and have kept moving forward, continuing to believe to meet the needs in the company. I want to bless all the people I can while I am still here. God always makes a way for us to have the victory when we trust Him with our whole heart, soul, mind, and strength.

The lifestyle of a believer from God’s point of view is what I want to manifest. Being a part of The Way Ministry and living God’s Word together is a priceless treasure.

There Is Always a Solution

It was a very busy time in my life—wife out of town, five teenagers at home, undershepherding an individual through the Foundational Class, and active-duty military. Also at this time, I was taking the Renewed Mind class, and it was a little over an hour drive from my house. I was driving home after one of the sessions at about eleven o’clock at night, out in the middle of nowhere with no one and nothing around, when my car went dead—no power, no lights, no anything. I was not happy. A lot of thoughts started going instantly through my mind. How do I get home? How do I get in touch with the kids? I have to be at work early in the morning! And I am sure there were more.

My old-man nature “took over,” and I started telling God what I thought and how unhappy I was. I was not being very polite about it either. After bending God’s ear for about a minute, I remembered I was taking a class to deal with situations that come up in life. I took a deep breath and started to speak in tongues. I also started running scripture that I knew through my brain—things like, “I am more than a conqueror,” “I can do all things,” “God shall supply all my need.”

Throughout this whole event, I did not see anything anywhere moving; I was all alone. After three or four minutes of speaking in tongues and running the Word through my brain, I heard a voice say, “Just stick the wire in the hole and go home.” I remember looking up and asking, “What wire and what hole?” I heard the voice a couple more times before I got out of the car—white shirt, white pants, no tools, and no idea what I was doing.

I am not a car mechanic, so what followed must have been inspired action. I opened the hood, then I took the distributer cap off, and inside I could see a broken wire. I thought, Well how am I going to fix this? The voice again said, “Just stick the wire in the hole and go home.” Looking up again I said, “Well if I stick it in there, it won’t stay because of the vibration of the motor.” I took out a pair of fingernail clippers and took off about an eighth of an inch of insulation on the wire. Then I thought to myself, At least now it has a chance of making contact. The wire was rotten and just crumbled, so that didn’t work. The voice came again, and it sounded just a little exasperated (or maybe it was my imagination). “Just stick the wire in the hole and go home.”

Our Founding President, Dr. Wierwille, is quoted in Life Lines as saying, “Man seldom gets around to believing God until he has exhausted all his energy trying to do it himself,” and “When you begin to believe what the Word says, your attitude will shake the world.” Well I stuck the wire in the hole, closed everything up, turned the ignition key, and drove home. As I am pulling into my parking spot, the car goes dead, again.

Many other incidents come to mind that have happened over the years. If it wasn’t for this ministry, I would still be sitting along the side of the road somewhere, trying to figure out what to do. God’s Word is the high road, and there is always a solution.

God’s Promises Prevail!

What a Joy to Live with Such Power!

The greatness of God’s Word that I have learned in The Way Ministry has taught me how to do the works of Jesus Christ and greater by operating the gift of holy spirit. When our son was a toddler, we were out together on a shopping trip. At the store, I placed him so he was sitting in the seat section of the shopping cart. I turned to look at an item on the shelf behind me, and as I did so, my son quickly stood up and fell out of the shopping cart onto the concrete floor below. As soon as it happened, I grabbed my crying son in my arms and immediately started to pray for him and believe that God would heal him of any injury. My son immediately stopped crying and was once again smiling. We finished our shopping and headed home.

I told my husband about the incident, and he thought it would be a good idea to take our son to our pediatrician, who was a believer. When I arrived at the doctor’s office, she started doing her examination of him. She felt his head and neck, then she got to his collar bone. She looked at me and asked if he had ever broken his collar bone. I told her no, he had not. She told me to feel a small nub on his collar bone. She said the bone had calcified in that one spot, indicating that it had been broken. She said that he must have broken his collar bone when he fell, but God had already healed it.

Because of the Word of God that I have learned in The Way Ministry, I knew I had the authority before God to pray and believe for complete wholeness for my son. What a joy to live with such power!

I Can Receive the Promises of God

It was springtime 1975, and I had been regularly attending my ministry’s home-based fellowships and had also taken their Foundational Class. The class is designed to teach you how to understand the Bible. It was during one of the home fellowship meetings that I learned that by Jesus Christ’s stripes, by his broken body, I had—past tense—been healed. I had never heard this before, and this truth struck home with me because for many years prior to this day, I had been plagued with seasonal bronchitis. I was told by my doctor that I would always have this problem. Every year as the seasons changed, I came down with bronchitis; but what I didn’t know at those times was that believing equals receiving.

However, in the Foundational Class that I had taken, I learned about believing and how I can receive the promises of God. When I heard and believed the truth that by Jesus Christ’s stripes I had been healed, I received complete deliverance from bronchitis. It has been more than forty years since I received this healing, and I am still thankful for this wonderful blessing in my life that was made available to me through the Word of God that I learned in The Way Ministry.

Praise God for His Wonderful Word!

Peace Instead of Turmoil

Growing up in a church that taught we were to worship the trinity (God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost) left me in great mental and emotional turmoil about Who God really is and who to pray to and whose name to pray in.

I began to search the Bible using a concordance and found where God said, “Thou shalt have no other gods before me” (Exodus 20:3). I saw many times that the Bible says there is one God (Romans 3:30, I Corinthians 8:6, Ephesians 4:6, and I Timothy 2:5). Psalms 86:10 says, “For thou art great, and doest wondrous things: thou art God alone.” I knew there were consequences for idolatry, and I wanted nothing to do with it.

I was taught to pray in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, when God’s Word actually says in Ephesians 5:20, “Giving thanks always for all things unto God and the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.” So, I would pray in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost and then finish my prayer with “in the name of Jesus Christ.” I wanted to obey God and pray correctly, but I still had turmoil and uncertainty about which way was truly God’s will.

The Way Ministry provided a Bible class called Power for Abundant Living, taught by Dr. Victor Paul Wierwille. The Word of God was taught, and I could read it for myself. It was clear there was only one God and that Jesus Christ was the only begotten Son of God. The eyes of my understanding were opened by the rightly divided Word of God taught by this ministry. The inner turmoil about Who God really is, and who to pray to, and whose name to pray in was dispelled by the light of God’s Word. Praise God in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ for His wonderful, matchless Word that has brought me peace instead of turmoil.

The Joy and Astonishment of Learning the Rightly Divided Word

I was introduced to a Way Ministry fellowship when in college, and I took the Foundational Class when I was twenty years old. I am now near retirement, but I clearly remember the joy and astonishment of learning the rightly divided Word of God on so many topics. I’d had no idea that it was available to pray perfectly and be built up spiritually—just one of many wonderful surprises!

To this day, I thrill when I read or hear something in God’s Word that exactly meets my need at the time. And there is hardly any greater privilege than to teach the Word so that others also can see its greatness, understand God’s heart and will, and enjoy sweet fellowship with our heavenly Father.

When I was a young girl, I wanted to love and please God better and to make a difference in the world. Wow, I am living my dreams! I thank God for bringing me to this ministry and for helping my husband and me stand with it for all these years.