My Story Part 1

I was born and raised in the church, as were my parents before me (and possibly even their parents). Mom was a missionary's daughter, while dad was the son of a retired army chaplain who lived through the Depression.

Growing up in the church, I knew about God and all that sort of thing and committed my life to Him at age 5. Unfortunately, either I didn't know what was going on or I forgot because I pretty much had Him in the farthest nook in the back of my mind all through Junior High and High School. I never felt like I was perfect enough for Him, even though on the outside I was a "model Christian". My character was, in fact, very good and I was looked up to by many for my values and standards. Unfortunately, I felt pretty dead inside and was wondering if I would ever actually meet this God of mine before I got to heaven. I was rather jealous of the people in the Old Testament because God did all sorts of things for them, but I never saw Him do anything for me. So, for most of my life, I thought of God as being "up there" and mad at me because I wasn't perfect enough for His standards.

Somewhere in this time period, I heard about God healing people (a little hard not to, since I grew up in John Wimber's Vineyard church). But for some reason, it stuck with me now and I began to want to see this sort of thing happen where I could watch - I wanted to know that God is real. I ended up going to another Vineyard Church a few years after John Wimber died: Vineyard Christan Church in Laguna Niguel, CA. There, I heard many more testimonies of supernatural healings and "God stuff".

Now that I was comfortable with God being real, I wanted to see God heal people through MY prayers. Again, though, I didn't think I was perfect enough for His power to flow through me. I had too many flaws and sins for my own standards. The standards weren't bad, but my mindset concerning them actually kept me from experiencing God. This sort of thinking continued, even though I was going to a Bible college.

Then, after 1 year in college, I went to a hear a speaker named Chad Dedmon. I don't even remember why. At any rate, he turns out to be this young, surfer-looking dude from So-Cal who had seen God do a lot of things in his life. He didn't really have a sermon or anything you'd normally hear from a speaker, but instead he just called out things that God had told him He wanted to heal physically in poeple that day. I remember that several people reported being healed on the spot, but there wasn't anything that was physically visible that was healed. But then, Chad found out that a woman was there who had one leg shorter than the other. Having found this out, he said, the craziest thing I'd heard up till that time:

"Who wants to see a miracle?"

I was stunned when I heard this, thinking that there was no way you could possibly say this with certainty. But hey, if a visible miracle was going to happen, I wanted to see it! So I went down to the front with about 50 other people where he had the lady sitting on the stage with her legs dangling over the edge. Chad made sure that everyone could see her legs clearly, then held them out straight and commanded the short one to grow out in Jesus' name. Before my eyes, that leg grew out!!!! I was stunned. It actually grew out too far by an inch or so! I had watched the knees to make sure there was no funny business going on and I could not deny what had just happened. Then Chad said another crazy thing:

"Well that was a good prayer!"

I was speechless. How could this guy act so....simple, so.....happy and content and confident? I was still trying to figure this out as he commanded the (now) longer leg to go back even with the other leg (and it did, of course). I went back to my seat with tears running down my face in awe of God. I knew that if God could use this unpolished college-age guy, He could use me too.

So that was the first major turn in my life. Guess what? God can (and will) use you too - if you let Him!

John H.