O NCE AGAIN exhaustion overcame me. I pulled over to the side of the road and stopped the car. It was only seventeen miles from my church to my home, but I had to stop and sleep until I regained the strength to continue.
I had been feeling this way for about three or four months, and I was at my wit’s end. I had always jogged five to seven miles a day and played basketball in the church basketball league. I was an extremely active per
son physically. Even my family noticed the difference. When we vacationed in Hawaii, I spent most of the two weeks in my hotel room. I would get up in the morning and be so tired that I didn’t even want to go to the beach. We knew something was wrong.
I was puzzled, but I knew I was Gods property and decided to leave it in His hands. If He wanted me to stay in the ministry, He would give me the strength to do it.
Finally I could hide it no longer. Because of the church building program, I was forced to go to the doctor. The bank had asked me to insure the loan; I had to take out a life insurance policy for $7 million to cover the cost of the church. If something happened to me and I couldn’t guarantee the loan, the bank would get their money. For that kind of life insurance policy I needed to see several doctors.
I visited the first doctor and took the required test. The report came back, stating that I had a very serious heart condition and was not insurable. I went to two more doctors who gave the same report. We were planning to pursue treatment the following week.
I told George Zimmer, our business manager, what the doctors had said. “Don’t tell the church,” I cautioned him. “The church doesn’t need a sick pastor.”
Of all things that Sunday, after my visit to the doctors, I preached on healing.
After the service George came up to me and said, “Tommy, I believe God will heal you if you believe.”
“Let’s pray,” I said.
George laid hands on me and prayed.
Two or three days later he came to me and said, “You look better.”
I feel better, I thought.
“Have you been tired?” he asked me,
“No,” I told him.
“I believe God healed you,” he said.
“How about that?” I said. “I think He did.”
We decided I should verify my healing with more medi
cal tests. George said he was going to call Dr. Edward Diethrich to schedule an appointment for me. Dr. Diethrich is a world-renowned heart doctor. In fact, one of our board members, Allan Mayer, the owner of the Oscar Mayer company, was on Dr. Diethrich’s board. He personally asked the doctor to test my heart.
At the doctor’s office, we went through two days of extensive testing. At the end of those tests, he said to me, “You’re the picture of health. There is nothing wrong with your heart. Your heart is great.”
God healed me. Now I go every year for checkups for my insurance. After eight years they have never found anything wrong with my heart.
All THE BLESSINGS ABRAHAM had received meant nothing unless he had an heir to whom he could pass them on. Isaac was the miracle child, the miracle in Abraham’s house. And it was through this miracle that all the promises of God to Abraham were going to be realized. Abraham had been promised that his descendants would be as numerous as the dust of the earth and the stars of the heavens (Gen. 13:16; 15:5).
Old Abe might not have been sure he would live to see those descendants, but in Isaac he saw them all. Without Isaac none of the promises of God to him would ever come to pass. Isaac was to Abraham and his promise what my voice was to me and my promise.
NOW it came about after these things, that God tested Abraham, and said to him, “Abraham!”
And he said, “Here I am.”
2 And He said, “Take now your son, your only son, whom you love, Isaac, and go to the land of Moriah; and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I will tell you.”
Genesis 22:1-2
You’ve got to learn to hold the promises of God lightly. Jesus didn’t grasp at His rightful position (Phil. 2:6-7). He laid it aside and as a result was exalted by the Father to be the King of kings and Lord of lords.
If God has truly given you a promise, a vision, a gift or a ministry, you don’t have to grasp for it. It is in His hands to bring it to pass. If you hold it too tightly, the gift can eventually become more precious to you than God who gave it.
Though it surely made no sense to Abraham, he set about to do what God had commanded. He ascended the mountain, built the altar and bound his son.
AND Abraham stretched out his hand, and took the knife to slay his son.
HBut the angel of the Lord called to him from heaven, and said, “Abraham, Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.”
12And he said, “Do not stretch out your hand against the lad, and do nothing to him; for now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from Me.”
13Then Abraham raised his eyes and looked, and behold, behind him a ram caught in the thicket by his horns; and Abraham went and took the ram, and offered him up for a burnt offering in the place of his son.
Genesis 22:10-13
To Abraham, following this God who first spoke to him in Ur certainly had a lot of emotional ups and downs. He left civilization to become a wanderer in the wilderness. He waited for his promised child to be born to his ninetyyear-old wife. Now this. But he learned to walk the walk of faith, and it was because of this faith that he received the promises.
It is worth noting that Abraham didn’t recognize that the
ram was stuck in the bush until he had passed God’s test. In the same way, you will often be unable to see that your miracle is also in the bush until you pass the test by putting your desire and your vision on the altar — even if those visions and desires are something you think God has given you.
Sometimes the key to finding your miracle is letting go and letting God fulfill His promise.
When God called me to go to Davenport, I thought, Surely this offer is just a test. But sometimes it’s no test. God actually wanted something put on the altar. In that case, it was my desire for a big church. But if I had persisted in grasping my vision and what I thought was God’s means of fulfilling His promise to me, I would have missed the greatest blessing of all.
Putting your gifts, abilities and even the promises God gives you on the altar is an act of worship to God. If you refuse to do so, it is because you have begun to worship the gift, the talent or the vision God has given you.
It would be like the widow worshipping the bottle from which the oil continued to pour. When God moves on our behalf, we tend to try to pass on to the next generation the instrument or the method God uses to send us our miracle. Eventually we will make relics out of the instruments of God’s blessings.
People have always had the tendency to forget that the source of their miracle is God.
When the children of Israel were being led through the wilderness, they often complained and rebelled against the Lord and against Moses. On one occasion the Lord sent fiery serpents among the people. Many were bitten and died.
They came to Moses repenting of their sin and asking him to intercede for them that God would remove the serpents.
Then the Lord said to Moses, “Make a fiery serpent, and set it on a standard; and it shall come about, that everyone who is bitten, when he looks at it, he shall live.”
9 And Moses made a bronze serpent and set it on the standard; and it came about, that if a serpent bit any man, when he looked to the bronze serpent, he lived.
Numbers 21:8-9
It wasn’t the serpent that healed the people; it was God. Yet who could ever forget the significance of that bronze serpent?
Of course, God told Moses to make the serpent, but Moses was the one who decided to make it out of bronze. He might have done better to have made the serpent out of something more perishable. Bronze serpents tend to last a very long time.
More than five hundred years later in the midst of the spiritually dark ages of Israel there arose a young king named Hezekiah. Though his father, King Ahaz, was thoroughly wicked, Hezekiah led a revival that brought Israel back from apostasy. The first order of revival business in those days was the destruction of the altars used for pagan idol worship.
And he [Hezekiah] did right in the sight of the Lord, according to all that his father David had done.
4 He removed the high places and broke down the sacred pillars and cut down the Asherah. He also broke in pieces the bronze serpent that Moses had made, for until those days the sons of
Israel burned incense to it; and it was called Nehushtan.
2 Kings 18:3-4
The bronze serpent, once the instrument of the miraculous power of God, was now worshipped as an idol.
Once a missionary came back to America from a country that was starving. What they needed more than anything else was a well and a pump to get the water out of the ground. They were Christians, and they needed help. So the missionary raised thousands of dollars to dig that well and put a pump on it. It was wonderful. The water flowed, and the crops began to grow, and they were saved from famine and starvation.
Soon after the well and irrigation system were installed, the missionary went home on furlough. When he returned, he was shocked to find the people had made a shrine and were worshipping the pump.
I surprise people when I say that I am not a goal-driven person. They wonder how we could have ever built such a church, started so many outreach ministries and accomplished so much.
I certainly know where I’m going, but I don’t dwell on the end goal. Purpose drives my life. It is my purpose to win lost people to Jesus Christ. That’s what motivates me every day.
The vision and goal are clear, but they’re put away and are seldom reviewed. You see, what you dwell on every day, what drives and motivates you, the thing that becomes the central focus of your life, can easily become something that you worship. And when we start to worship our dreams, visions and goals, it’s very hard to lay them on the altar.
For preachers the goal might be a large church. For
others the vision might be for success in business or athletics or living in a more affluent neighborhood. We also have plans and goals for our children.
None of these things is wrong. But if you are looking for a miracle in your house to enable you to fulfill your dreams, you might not find it until you are willing to put those dreams on the altar.
Your vision cannot become your idol. As a young man I dreamed of pastoring a great church. Through the years I didn’t ask every day when it was going to come to pass. I didn’t think every day, I’m working toward the vision. It was just there in my subconscious. I didn’t fret; I was enjoying the trip. I was happy abiding in the Lord. If it was His vision, He would bring it to pass.
One day I looked up at our church sanctuary and realized something. It was what I had envisioned when I was a young man. I marveled to myself: Well, it did come to pass after all.
I am amazed that I am living in the vision I had years ago. But it has not been an idol, and I have not been obsessed with it. The trip has been more enjoyable than the destination.
One of the greatest feelings is to know that what you are doing is God’s idea and not your own. If you’re doing God’s thing, then you have even more assurance that He is going to be with you to help you bring it to pass.
One of the questions most asked of pastors is this: How do you know if what you are wanting to do is just your desire or God’s plan?
It’s hard to have assurance that it’s from God until you put those plans and dreams on the altar. But when the sense of God’s guiding is still there after you’ve laid those things before Him repeatedly with a willing heart to let them go, then you begin to have that assurance.
You can say, This is not my idea. I laid it on the altar many times. This is God’s plan, and I feel it’s my duty to obey.
At first you hold on to the vision. Eventually, the vision begins to hold on to you. You couldn’t let it go if you wanted to. They say if you keep a vision for five years, it will come to pass. But most people cannot keep a vision for five years. They get discouraged and give up.
I could have grasped for my dream of a large church and missed the miracle of the tiny church in Davenport. I could have refused to leave Davenport and missed the miracle of Phoenix. I could have lost my ability to minister because of my heart problem. Nevertheless, I laid all those plans and dreams on the altar and found that each time God had a miracle in store for me. The miracle was in the bush.
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