I was 40 years old before I ever saw faith! Oh, I’d heard people talk about it for years and I saw lots of people say they believed in God, but I’d never SEEN faith. But around 1994 a guy named Jack Johnson, who lives near me came down with AIDS. Now this was before anyone who had it lived. It is believed he got from his wife Susie, who received something like 8 blood transfusions shortly after giving birth to their second child. (Susie by the way has the AIDS virus but it is dormant.) Two days after Jack was told he had the disease he received a revelation from God that he would not die from it, but that he was healed and that he would live and glorify God. He told Susie and his kids about the Word God had given him and they believed him. For the next two years Jack suffered and seemed to wither away, and though he didn’t really love to read the Bible, he knew that God wanted him to, so he read it quite a bit. Something else is that Jack and his family continued to SAY OUTLOUD that he was healed. I mean, people would ask Jack, “How are you feeling?” He would smile and say, “I may not look like it but thanks to God, I AM HEALED!” People thought he was nuts but … they watched.

During these two years Jack was in and out of the hospital something like 7 times. The last time he went in he was about half blind, he weighed next to nothing and he was terribly weak. The doctors told Susie that she’d better spend every minute possible with him because each moment could be his last which she did, until one evening when she had to leave the room to go to the bathroom or something.

Now Jack was in that hospital room all alone. He told me that he knew that the time was right for him to die. He said that the Grim Reaper was right there and that it would have been so much easier to just shut his eyes and let death take him. However God had told him that he was going to live. So ─ now picture this Jack is all alone and everyone, everyone except Jack, God and his wife and kids expect him to die. Jack is weak and every visible, physical indication is that he will die but instead, Jack opens his mouth and says, “I do not believe the doctors. I do not believe my friends. I do not believe the media. I do not believe the experts. I do not believe the lies of the devil. I believe You God and You say I am healed!”

It was then that Jack experienced a divine epiphany. He told me that in an instant he became warm from head to toe with an exquisite, divine love that he realized had completely healed him. He said that in a moment of time he understood everything and that he knew that everything…everything comes from God. He told me that during this experience he felt and comprehended that all of eternity was in now. He said it was a pure and perfect bliss in which he closed his eyes in complete security and slept.

When he woke up Susie was back in the room and he said to her, “Quick. Get me a Bible.” When she brought the Bible to him Jack opened it and said that he understood it. More than 15 years later I can tell you that he hasn’t taken his nose out of the Bible. Jack is healthy, and he and his family are a living testament and glory to God.

Back then I was aware of Jack’s illness and his healing but I could not imagine how it happened. I interviewed him because I thought it would make an interesting article that I could sell. At that time I was studying Buddhism, Hinduism and was really into New Age stuff. I knew I was looking for something but I didn’t know it was God. But I still remember how the light went on and the blinders came off when Jack told me, “So I said out loud, I do not believe my friends. I do not believe the media. I do not believe the experts. I do not believe the lies of the devil. I believe You God and You say I am healed!” That had a tremendous influence on me. Thinking about the power of faith like that still makes me just swell up with awe and wonder.

Well after I got it, I too went to the Bible and began reading it. But, I didn’t know how to study it and I wanted to learn a lot faster than I was. I could not find a church to feed me God, nor a mature Christian to teach me about God so I went straight to God. I told Him that I needed real help here. I said, “I need somebody to teach me Your heart.” It wasn’t too long after that heartfelt prayer that I came across a tape by Joyce Meyer. I cannot recall how that happened but over the next 7 years I’ll bet I listened to every tape she ever produced.

I continued to go straight to God for everything I needed. If there was a passage I didn’t understand I’d tell Him that I didn’t get it. More often, sooner than later, He’d reveal His heart in that scripture to me. Pretty soon I quit messing with trying to figure out how I was going to understand or solve something. I learned to just give it to God and go on; He’ll give me what I need when it’s right. So, leaning on and trusting God and then watching Him work and help me and take care of me and everything else too was, and still is, a tremendous influence on me; probably THE positive influence on me.

And, finally there’s Joyce Meyer. She has a no-nonsense style that I am really attracted to. And, overtime, just by listening to her and the way she would unpack a lesson, I learned how to study the Bible myself. She opened my spiritual eyes to the infathomable preciousness of the Bible. She was also a living example of someone who had the kind of unique, intimate and authentic personal relationship with God that I wanted!

I remember many, many times I’d be listening to Joyce Meyer while I was driving. She’d get me so tickled that I’d have to pull over. Tons of times she would teach something so astonishing, so refreshing and revealing that I’d have to pull over again, stop the tape and just sit there for a moment and think, “Wow!” And, then there were other times when she would teach me something from the Bible that would really get me. I’d pull the car off the road and start sobbing.

I’m here to tell you, that woman can teach the Bible! Her teaching has influenced and changed my life!

Having said that let me give you two statistics that will blow your mind. 50 million people in this country who think of themselves as Christian and who at one time attended church no longer do so.³ Most of these people claim that having a close personal relationship with God is one of their top priorities in life and two-thirds consider their religious faith to be very important to them.⁴ So, it looks like lots and lots of Christians have been to church, they didn’t get much out of it, quit going, want something more and are still looking.

Okay, here is another one, and this one makes me just plain mad. Only 51% of this country’s Protestant pastors have a Biblical worldview meaning that they believe that absolute moral truth exists based on the Bible, and that they have six core beliefs which are based on the Bible. These core beliefs are the accuracy of the Bible, the sinless nature of Jesus Christ, the literal existence of Satan, the omnipotence and omniscience of God, salvation by grace alone and the personal responsibility to evangelize.⁵ What makes this so significant is that the 49%…almost half, of these ministers who do not have a Biblical worldview cannot give people what they do not have. Life…Life, comes from God and God alone. We receive His Life through our relationship with God and His Word. If this source of Life is not believed in and not shared from the leaders of the church, and if the congregation of the church is so ignorant of the Bible that they don’t even know what they are missing, then it is no wonder all these churches are dying and are clueless as to why.

Years ago I was on the governing board of a church I used to attend. Our membership and attendance was really dropping. One night those of us on the board along with our minister were talking about these declining numbers and our preacher commented that he was totally puzzled as to why the church across the street from ours was flowing over with attendance every Sunday. This other church was a Bible based church. I was stunned that he was so bewildered. Later I asked our minister why he never taught from the Bible other than the obligatory reading each week from the Old and New Testaments and the Epistles. I asked him why he never encouraged our congregation to bring their Bibles to church or to read their Bibles and I asked him why he himself, in the Sunday school classes he would occasionally teach, never taught or referred to the Bible. He point blank told me that he did not want our congregation in the Bible. Although I pressed him on this, he never explained why. So, I believe these incredible statistics.

I think this neglect and rejection of the Lord and the Bible probably started sometime after World War II and about the time when we started relying on Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the FDIC and other areas where we attempted to create our own financial security. About that same time we exploded in medical advances with antibiotics, open-heart surgeries, and lots of other stuff. We developed the air plane, and air conditioning. We sent a man to the moon. We produced cell phones, computers, faxes, iPods and the list goes on and on. I think we probably began to think we could figure everything out and create anything we needed and so we began to rely on ourselves and worship ourselves instead of relying and worshipping God.

This is why I wrote The Desperate Christian. There’s a good chance that the Christian who wants more God isn’t going to find Him in a church or won’t be able to find a mature Christian to teach him. So, if he gives up before he finds what he needs, then he will continue to starve and the church will continue to die. But, if he goes straight to God and cries “You help me God!” then God will get to him. God will grow him in ways that are uniquely effective to that person. And, after that individual has developed and grown in a secure, loving and living relationship with God he must go back to the church and “witness” to them about his very real, authentic relationship with God. You see, at a time when many Christians have lost hope in the church they need to understand that the witness of their very own relationship with God IS the HOPE of the church.

** Many of the books I review are Advance Review Copies. These books are loaned to me for my review. I am in no way compensated for my time nor am I asked to give anything but my honest review. If you have further questions, please, review my FTC Disclaimer on my homepage.