A world-renowned ministerial superstar of the past once noted that when God gave him an apple, it always had a worm in it.  Though I had not been converted at the time, I knew the famous evangelist was onto something.  I had been preaching for several years and this man was one of my “heroes of the faith.”  I too had noticed that not only did my spiritual “apples” (blessings) always have “worms” (curses) in them, but so did the “apples” of everyone else I knew.  My hero did not explain the presence of the “worms.”  However, not long after that the Lord began to reveal to me 1) why curses always accompanied blessings and 2) where both came from.  All I knew at the time was that for every step I took forward spiritually, I took two steps backward spiritually.  A blessing always seemed to be followed by two curses.  Being a minister in what came to be known as the “charismatic movement” which featured divine healing, casting out of devils, etc., I believed that I had arrived at the apex of the Christian walk.  There simply could not be anything above what I was experiencing.  I could not wait for morning to come for there was a continuous flow of miracles taking place in my ministry, and on a continual basis.  Still, I was struggling with sinful thoughts, attitudes and impulses.  I had an intense hunger for righteousness, but did not know how to satisfy my hunger.  Try as I most certainly did, hardly a temptation arose that did not defeat me.  If I had kept score, the card would have read: Satan–many, me–few.

Satan’s attacks were coming fast and furious and getting more forceful by the day.  Yet God was using me to bring what I believed to be “the whole counsel of God” to the people.  I was healing their sick and casting out their devils (we called them demons).  But I knew that the Lord was speaking to me through my spiritual, physical and economic ups and downs.  Being hard of head and stiff of neck, it took several years for me to realized that He was calling me, not merely to work for Him ministerially, but to come to Him where He was in terms of holiness.  He was calling me to join Him on a much higher spiritual level than the one on which I was living, which I thought was as high as I could rise.  I began to see that a “great gulf” separated me from the spiritual level to which He was calling me. I was miserable and confused.  Was I not as high as a human was allowed to go in terms of godliness?  Was God not blessing me with spiritual power and using me to demonstrate that power in miraculous ways?  Was what He was calling me to do actually possible for a mere man?  No, I concluded, it was not.  I was daydreaming–confusing wishful thinking with God’s “voice.”  Life was as good as it could get.  Still, I knew that I was hearing the voice of God telling me to leave where I was in terms of holiness and to “come up hither” to where He was.  And it was not a friendly request.  It was a divine command.  One which I did not want to obey it would cost me my ministry.  THE CHURCH WOULD NOT ACCEPT WHAT GOD WAS TELLING ME, WHICH WAS DIRECTLY FROM HIS WORD.

During this period of my life I began to be bombarded with a single passage of Scripture in which Jesus says to His disciples: “For unto whom much is given, of him much is required” (Lk. 12:48).  Everywhere I turned those words kept being spoken to me either verbally or in writing.  Time and again they would come at me from the most unexpected sources.  Once a detective on a t.v. police program made the statement to another policeman.  The Lord had given me much in terms of faith, power, knowledge, insight and revelation relative to His Word.  I realized that He expected me to use what He had given me.  He had given me so much; He was expecting equally as much from me.  It was during this time that I came to know what I have written on this website and spoken on my YouTube program.  But I was alone in what I knew, except for the two people who had introduced me to those Truths, Truths that were totally rejected by the church people among whom and to whom I ministered.  See the Introduction to this website for some of the church’s “truths” Catholics and Protestants substitute for God’s Truths.  I was not preaching and doing what God required of me–TO TEACH AND DO GOD’S WORD.  I was caught in a spiritual quandary.  I could minister church “truth” and be successful within professing Christendom.  Or I could obey God and be totally alone and rejected.  Misery overtook me to the point that I contemplated suicide.  I hesitated between two “voices,” two truths as God’s voice began to fade.

Then He took His Holy Spirit from me.  My world fell apart.  I soon found myself working in the oil fields of South Texas, withering away both spiritually and physically on the Mexican border.  My spiritual life was a mess as I struggled to take care of my family and minister whenever I could.  I was a walking dead man.  Everything I did failed.  The apples had stopped coming but the worms had not.  I once fasted for 34 days taking only water in hopes that my sacrifice would bring me out of my spiritual stupor.  I found that I was farther from God after the fast than I had been before the fast.  While in the depths of the spiritual darkness that I had created for myself I was awakened early one morning by an angel who stood at my bedside staring down at me.  He said nothing.  He didn’t need to.  God’s silent message was loud and clear.  Not long after that I lost my oil field job and, through a miracle, was awarded another job here in Athens, a city I had never heard of located in the heart of east Texas.  Praise the living God He never stopped calling to me, telling me to come up to where He was.  From that point I began my slow climb out of the spiritual sewer into which I had flung myself.

By this time I knew that what I had “heard” was not wishful thinking.  God was calling me to join Him on His level of holiness which had been exemplified by Jesus of Nazareth.  Jesus, He told me, was my example.  Just as He and Jesus had been “one” spiritually while He was on earth, the Father was calling me to be one with Him.  While I meditated on this incredible call He directed me to study the gospel of John.  Honestly, I thought I knew all there was to know about the book.  I questioned the “voice” I had heard.  But He persisted.  Somewhat reluctantly I dived into the precious tome with my usual zeal and was shocked as my Father began to reveal Truths that, though I had read them, I had not received revelation concerning them.  In the gospel of John and elsewhere He told me that He had called  me to “walk as He (Jesus) walked” (1 Jn. 2:6) and to “purify myself as He (Jesus) had been pure” (1 Jn. 3:3) and to “… overcome (Satan) as He (Jesus) had overcome” (Rev. 3:21) while He walked this earth as a man.  Through the writing of John God assured me that the walk He had called me to walk was possible.  The rest was up to me.

God offers no options or suggestions–HE COMMANDS.  Like the Apostle Paul, I had no choice in the matter.  Woe will be unto me if I fail to rise to the spiritual level of Jesus of Nazareth.  And that was not all.  Through a myriad of Scriptures I learned that to “walk as He walked” involved the ministry also.  As Jesus said in John 14:12, everything He had done as a man I WILL DO.  And not only that, I WILL DO EVEN GREATER THINGS THAN HE DID.  God cannot lie.  Those are promises from God through the lips of Jesus Christ Himself.  What He promises He must produce.  If, that is, we obey Him.  And herein lies the answer to the apple-worm conundrum.  My “worms” (illnesses, ministerial failures, financial problems, family problems, weather problems, etc.) were God’s “voice” commanding me to spiritually rise to where He and His Son are.

Impossible, man says as he brushes aside what I have just written, all of which is found in His Holy Scriptures.  Religious man contends that common sense and human experience prove that such a level of holiness is impossible for any man to reach, that believing in Jesus is all that is required for salvation.  But Jesus of Nazareth proved that theology wrong.  Jesus was 100% man, which I prove in the series titled Jesus of Nazareth: God, Man or God-man?  He set the example that we must follow.  Otherwise there will always be “worms” in our “apples.”  The Provider of both the blessings and the curses is the God of the universe.  An honest, Truth-seeking study of Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28 prove this.  These chapters describe God’s “cause and effect” law perfectly, as does the entirety of the new Testament.  Though only a few are called to God’s ministry, all are called to “walk as He walked.”  “Without holiness, no man will see God” (Heb. 12:14).

Surely I am not the only human being that has been called to Christ’s level of holiness in this life.  If so, then so be it.  But I must believe that I am not alone.  I believe that “many are called” to that heavenly walk on earth in this lifetime, but that “few are chosen” for having answered the call (Mat. 22:14).  I am growing closer to where God awaits with each passing day.  There will come a day when the personal and ministerial promises of God will be manifested in me.  That day is just over the horizon.  I am close enough to see it in vision and to literally feel it in my physical body.

When asked by one of His disciples to show them the Father, Jesus replied: “When you have seen me, you have seen the Father.”  My goal, my only passion and desire is for that statement to describe me. God has commanded it and it will come to pass, and soon.  God’s table of character and ministry is set before me and He is saying, “Come and dine.”  I am dining.  Soon I will arise from God’s table filled and ready to defeat Satan publicly and globally as the God-rejecting world, including “the church,” watches.  L.J.