Discovery | Exploring My Experiences

Discuss ONE experience for each of the following:

A Rewarding Ministry Experience.

Once, when leading a group for the Christian Club on Campus, at College of the Desert, I (and the group) laid hands on a young lady, and she received the baptism of the Holy Spirit and began speaking in other tongues. That was the first moment I saw that something bigger than me was possible. God really could use me. And it frightened me, as much as it thrilled me.

A Gratifying Personal Achievement. 

Publishing Banking Basics for Believers. A woman I didn't know, was informed by a friend of mine to read it. I gave her a copy, my gift. She said that it helped her personally and professionally understand money in a new way. She was doing the job I had been doing when I started writing it. She felt that it should be mandatory reading. What an amazing circle of experience.

A Touching Relationship Experience.

Hearing my wife (to be at the time) pray in tongues for the first time. It was the first time I found out that it still existed. Before her, I thought it had either died centuries ago, or was happening in some remote monastery. When I heard her, my world opened wider than ever before. I knew I needed more of whatever she had.

A Tremendously Difficult Life Experience.

My Pastor-Father came out as an Alcoholic Atheist, later turned Crack Addict, then Psychologist. Parents Divorced. World crashed down. I struggled with identity for those first few years. But as I look back now... I struggled with identity for years before too. As a child I'd seen Jesus with my own eyes, and a demon too. Yet I grew up in this frozen-chosen religious traditional church, full of people who wouldn't know God if he walked up and said hello. There were precious few born again people in those churches. So I was always torn between the life of the supernatural I experienced around me, and the dead religiosity of the people around me. So as I look back... it wasn't an event that changed me... it was an event that crystallized the difference, and forced me to choose which world I would live in: Spiritual or Natural.